A Year in the Merde

or, A shameless plug for a funny book.

I got Maggie a copy of Stephen Clarke's A Year in the Merde (2004), a pseudo-autobiographical novel about his time in France, to celebrate our year of colocation. She read it, and now I'm reading it. It's pretty funny, especially the transcriptions of heavily French-accented English. The title refers to the protagonist's unfortunate habit of stepping in every pile of dog poo he comes near (a result of Parisians' unfortunate habit of not picking up after their dogs), as well as an idiomatic French expression meaning "to be in the thick of things."

I highly recommend the book, and I'll probably refer to it again in future blogs - especially once I, too, fall victim to the bane of Parisian streets . . .