The topless encounter that led to a lifelong love for France
When he was nine, John von Sothen visited France for the first time. Like a million other American kids on family holidays, he was bored by the cafés, the bateaux-mouches, the sights. Until, that is, they came to a seaside town near Marseille. Beside the beach’s public changing rooms, he watched an adult brunette walking past wearing sunglasses, a headscarf, bikini bottoms and no top. Hardly had he registered that he was just yards from two naked breasts than his parents dragged him off. In the sea he noticed that the entire beach was filled with topless women. At that moment, he writes, ‘The purpose of France hit me: you could actually live like this. It was legal.’
Scroll forward a generation and von Sothen’s living in Paris, married to the French Anaïs, with two children, Otto and Bibi, and has a job writing for Esquire and Vanity Fair. In this clear-eyed and charming book, he offers a guide to French love, slang, food, conversation, schools, teenagers, TV, politics, holidays and much more.
You learn, for instance, that Parisians never marry in Paris. They blag a glamorous manor or ancient farmhouse from an uncle or cousin, spend the bulk of the wedding budget on champagne and – if they’re really showing off – cook a pig in an earth pit. You discover that the French enjoy stacks of holiday time. They get two weeks off in February (to support the ski season), two more around Halloween, lots of three-day weekends... You need to be wary, though, of agreeing to take vacances with a group of fellow school parents. Von Sothen discovers how dictatorial the French can be, with their six-hour foodshopping trips, communal breakfasts, earlymorning volleyball and the requirement that everyone must contribute a ‘workshop’ on painting, drama, philosophy...
A hilarious chapter on speaking French reveals that a tiny word can cause problems. When an estate agent comes to sell their home, von Sothen calls it a former ‘entrepot d’epices’ (spice warehouse); by saying a ‘duh’ rather than a ‘day’, it comes out as ‘entrepot de pisse’. His confusion also lands him in trouble when, invited to join a salon called Futurbulence, he’s convinced he is being asked to an échangiste, or swingers club.
It’s not all jolly cultural misunderstandings. Von Sothen’s diverse neighbourhood is rocked by terrorist shootings at Le Carillon, their local bar, and the Bataclan music venue. Syrian refugees arrive, because of its proximity to the Gare du Nord, and a French
version of Occupy Wall Street appears, demanding ‘Death to Bankers’. Then a supervised heroin shoot centre opened, ‘creating wandering zombies, high or desperate, rummaging through garbage cans while they waited for the centre to open’. The author’s dream of living in the cute French movie Amélie comes to an abrupt halt. But this wake-up call only makes his bit of Paris seem more real to him.
This thoroughly entertaining book ends movingly as von Sothen has his parents’ belongings shipped from Washington to the Normandy countryside, uniting his childhood and his newly settled family life in a shimmering vision of chez moi – home.