I’ve recently read some books I might not have chosen if I had pondered the selections for long. This week’s review of Mark Greenside’s I’ll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany kind of falls into that category. I picked it up from the employee suggestions at my local bookstore. I love a good memoir, and I love France, having studied in Aix-en-Provence as a young woman.
Although Aix and Brittany are not at all the same, I hoped I would connect with Greenside’s story, and boy did I ever. It was delightful, hilarious, touching, and sweet. I loved it.
I think the art of a good memoir is finding that sweet spot when the reader connects with the narrator in the little things that make us human. Unlike the biography or autobiography of a famous person, the memoirist just needs to have a story to tell. I read memoirs not because I am curious about the details of some famous person’s life, but because I am looking for the human condition.
Greenside captures the insecurities we encounter when faced with a different culture. His spontaneous purchase of a house in Brittany after living there for a summer is not only a fascinating journey of personal discovery for him, but an entertaining story masterfully told.
The epitome of Mark Greenside’s bicultural experience occurs at his 50th birthday celebration, and illustrates just how close he is to understanding the French way, and in a self-deprecating way explains how he will never be able to feel French. And yet, he is French enough. He understands, in the end, that he has become his best self.