Stephen Clarke

A Year in the Merde

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A Year in the Merde is the almost-true account of the author's adventures as an expat in Paris. Based on his own experiences and with names changed to "avoid embarrassment, possible legal action-and to prevent the author's legs being broken by someone in a Yves Saint Laurent suit", the book is narrated by Paul West, a twenty-seven-year-old Brit who is brought to Paris by a French company to open a chain of British “tea rooms.” He must manage of a group of lazy, grumbling French employees, maneuver around a treacherous Parisian boss, while lucking into a succession of lusty girlfriends (one of whom happens to be the boss's morally challenged daughter). He soon becomes immersed in the contradictions of French culture: the French are not all cheese-eating surrender monkeys, though they do eat a lot of smelly cheese, and they are still in shock at being stupid enough to sell Louisiana, thus losing the chance to make French the global language. The book will also tell you how to get the best out of the grumpiest Parisian waiter, how to survive a French business meeting, and how not to buy a house in the French countryside.The author originally wrote A Year in the Merde just for fun and self-published it in France in an English-language edition. Weeks later, it had become a word-of-mouth hit for expats and the French alike. With translation rights now sold in eleven countries and already a bestseller in the UK and France, Stephen Clarke is clearly a Bill Bryson (or a Peter Mayle…) for a whole new generation of readers who can never quite decide whether they love-or love to hate-the French.
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288 printed pages
Publication year
2008
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Quotes

  • Константин Соколовhas quoted9 years ago
    There was a balcony running along the upper floor. On a
    fine day you could get out of bed and sit there naked waggling the soles of your feet (or anything else you wanted
    to waggle) down across the rooftops of Paris.
  • Елена Батищеваhas quoted6 years ago
    No, I'm not a bloody English gentleman, I wanted to tell her. If she meant gentleman in the not-wanting-to-sleep-with-you-immediately sense of the word, the only English gentlemen I knew of were pre-pubescents who were just waiting until their pubic hair started to grow. Christine didn't know that we Brits had come a long way since Jane Austen's heroines could be sure that they wouldn't get a good rogering as soon as they said yes to a walk in the woods. Even Princess Di used to do it up against a tree with her riding instructor, didn't she? And now there was nothing at all gentlemanly going on in my brain or my boxer shorts.
    "Pardonne-moi, mon Englishman," she said fondly, and left me standing there in the ladies, alone with yet another useless erection. Lucky hard-ons are bio-degradable, I thought, because I was throwing a lot of them away.
    "Fuck you, Mr Darcy," I told the ceiling. "Fuck you, Hugh Grant. How can you expect a Brit to get his end away if you go around being so bloody polite all the time?"
  • Елена Батищеваhas quoted6 years ago
    I saw that I was witnessing an important lesson in Parisian life: I mustn't try to make people like me. That's much too English. You've got to show them that you don't give a shit what they think. Only then will you get what you want. I'd been doing it all wrong, trying to win people over. If you smile too much, they think you're retarded.

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