Book Reviews And Interviews

After years having a successful career in Canada, retirement ought to have been something the author, Sue Harper should have looked forward to. However, work-life has structure and purpose; what would life be like without it? Sue’s partner Bonnie, an artist who retired 6 month earlier, was happily enjoying the opportunities this stage in her […]

I have got to start this review by saying that if you are looking for a book about ‘real’ French life, told from an unusual angle, and which will have you laughing your socks off, then this is the book for you! I also have to add that it was so good that most of […]

Part culinary memoir and part travelogue, Carole Bumpus gathered this compilation of intimate interviews, conversations, stories, and traditional family recipes in the kitchens of French families as she travelled throughout France. Reading Searching for Family and Traditions at the French Table you’ll join her as she explores Champagne caves/wineries and historic cathedrals, local farmers’ markets, […]

A series of of short vignettes details the lives of Keith and Val, a couple of Americans living a double life. Half the year they’re in Silicon Valley, California and the other half they spend in St Remy de Provence, France. After several years of to-ing and fro-ing, learning French, making friends and really digging […]

Claude Monet, the impressionist painter is one of the most famous artists that ever lived. Many people visit his house and beautiful gardens at Giverny, in Normandy, and fall in love with the artistry present in the garden’s beauty. I, like many, associate him with his famous paintings of the lily ponds there. When I […]

Stanley George, his wife, and two dogs Fritz and Truda took a leap into a new life in France thirteen years ago, after enjoying many holidays there. Both retired, house sold, with the world their oyster they hadn’t decided on the region they were going to live in, however they knew it would be a […]

After reading Mark Greenside’s first and extremely entertaining book, ‘I’ll Never Be French (No Matter What I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany, I couldn’t wait to start this one, and I was not disappointed! The first book tells how in 1991 a reluctant Mark agrees to visit Brittany with a girlfriend, and […]

I’ve got a new favourite author – Mark Greenside. As an English expat who has lived in France for over fourteen years, I have for decades enjoyed reading what feels like hundreds of ‘a new life in France’ type of books, however for me this one REALLY sums up life in France. It grabbed me […]

Le Mot Juste: How to Impress Tout le Monde with Your French A tiny but fabulous book of words – French words. The sort of words that roll of the tongue and sound delicious, romantic and so… well French! Imogen Fortes has pulled together a list of fabulous French words that are used in every […]

This award winning book is simply beautiful, within its pages are stories within stories, and they all began with an encounter between an American soldier and a little French boy in the months following the D-day landings on Omaha Beach, France, in June 1944. Finding Gilbert, a true story The soldier was the author’s father, […]