In my torn pants and yesterday’s T-shirt, with uncombed hair, unshaven, and unwashed, no one in the shop looks like me. No pajamas, bathrobes, hair curlers, jogging outfits, or sweat-pants on anyone. Even more amazing is how they’re dressed: the women in skirts and pumps with sweaters and scarves the men in slacks, shirts with collars, and shiny shoes. In Brittany, it’s French people waiting for bread. it would look like a stakeout of some kind of takeover. Seven people are waiting ahead of me, in a wedge. That’s it-I’m a pusher, and France is a nation of pullers. The life of a such a place is fascinating. His voyage of discovery is mostly first-person, present tense, so it is as close as one can get to being there with him.
He is very good at describing people, places and things….and even better at describing his erroneous assumptions. This is a book about a small village in Brittany that he comes to know (and, perhaps understand) intimately. Greenside writes with humor (though not in the vein of Peter Mayle whom he acknowledges). I hope to answer both questions and some others along the way. Greenside is an author who spent a summer in France. It explores the joys and adventures of living a double life. It is a memoir about fitting in, not standing out being part of something larger, not being separate from it following, not leading. I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do) is a beginning and a homecoming for Greenside, as his father's family emigrated from France. Against his personal inclinations and better judgments, he places his trust in the villagers he encounters - neighbors, workers, acquaintances - and is consistently won over and surprised as he manages and survives day-to-day trials: from opening a bank account and buying a house to removing a beehive from the chimney - in other words, learning the cultural ropes, living with neighbors, and making new friends. In a playful, headlong style, and with enormous affection for the Bretons, Greenside tells how he makes a life for himself in a country where he doesn't speak the language or know how things are done. When Mark Greenside - a native New Yorker living in California, doubting (not-as-trusting-as Thomas, downwardly mobile, political lefty, writer, and lifelong skeptic - is dragged by his girlfriend to a tiny Celtic village in Brittany at the westernmost edge of France, in Finistère, "the end of the world," his life begins to change. Tired of Provence in books, cuisine, and tablecloths? Exhausted from your armchair travels to Paris? Despairing of ever finding a place that speaks to you beyond reason? You are ripe for a journey to Brittany, where author Mark Greenside reluctantly travels, eats of the crêpes, and finds a second life.
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