Vantastic France is Steve Bichard’s first book but almost certainly not his last – it was inspired by his love of people watching and the plethora of opportunity to observe the characteristics of expats in France where he now lives.
Take a typical white van man with a short-fuse, his girlfriend and her teenage son – relocate them to a run-down old farm house in France – add financial problems, nutty neighbours, family secrets and misunderstandings and you have a recipe for fun and disaster.
Barry Taylor – the fictional “hero” of the book – has a bee in his bonnet about moving to France and persuades his partner and her son to come with him – they must overcome obstacles at all stages – in getting there, staying there and making a new life for themselves.
I won’t spoil the ending by telling you the whole plot but life for the trio isn’t always a bed of roses and from the very start there are forces in play determined to destroy their dream and bring a new life in France to an end. The book takes you through their trials and tribulations, the tears and the laughter and gradually reveals a much darker tangled web of a past life catching up on the present with dramatic repercussions.
One of the key players is Clarissa, a British expat neighbour of the family in their little village in Brittany. She is a woman of great snootiness, an interfering old bag, not much enamoured of the French people she now resides with and without much charm it seems. As an expat myself, I can promise you there is a “Clarissa” in pretty much every town and village where you find British expats and Steve Bichard is spot on with this character traits!
Steve Bichard, author of Vantastic France
An engaging and entertaining read with a twist – you can buy Vantastic France by Steve Bichard at Amazon. A very versatile man, when he’s not writing or growing tomatoes (his alter-ego is Mr Tomato King!) he runs a French Classified Advertising site and blogs on http://stevebichard.com.
