num_pages: 256
description: 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 crpes and finds a second life. When Mark Greensidea native New Yorker living in California doubting (not-as-trusting-as) Thomas downwardly mobile political lefty writer and lifelong skepticis dragged by his girlfriend to a tiny Celtic village in Brittany at the westernmost edge of France in Finistre the end of the world his life begins to change. 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. Against his personal inclinations and better judgments he places his trust in the villagers he encountersneighbors workers acquaintancesand 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 chimneyin other words learning the cultural ropes living with neighbors and making new friends. 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. It is a memoir about fitting in not standing out; being part of something larger not being separate from it; following not leading. It explores the joys and adventures of living a double life.
language: English
title: I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany
publisher: Atria Books