Petite Anglaise

Zusatztext Praise for Petite Anglaise “A digital-age fairytale in Paris. Petite Anglaise is light! frank and tremendous fun… Like all good writers! her work simply enables us to appreciate the diversity! possibilities! trials! and beauty of life.” — Guardian “Magnificent … Sanderson has a novelist’s gift for capturing certain eternal situations.” —Financial Times “A winner…Written with breathtaking candor … it’s the story of a love affair—not so much with Mr. Frog! their adorable blonde daughter Tadpole! or even her elusive lover James! but with Paris itself … Like Peter Mayle! she brings France to life on the page.” — Daily Express “A wonderful read.” — InStyle “ Petite Anglaise describes daily life in Paris to a T! interspersing bittersweet domestic scenes with an amusing picture of French manners.” — Conde Nast Traveler Informationen zum Autor Catherine Sanderson worked for a British accounting firm in Paris when she began her blog! Petite Anglaise. When her employer discovered the blog! she was fired! and her story was picked up by news agencies around the world. She continues to write the blog! which boasts 100!000 viewers per month! and still lives in Paris with her daughter. Chapter One Snapshots The day I created my anonymous Internet diary, the nom de plume "Petite Anglaise" instinctively sprang to mind, and felt so very right, so very natural, that I considered no other. Ask any English girl who has ever lived in France, and I'm sure she'll tell you she has been called a petite anglaise at some time or another. It is a name loaded with meaning: an affectionate tone implies that the anglaise in question is not just English but cute and English; a hint of lasciviousness makes her sound sexy, but also taps into a commonly held view that English girls are rather easy. But there is another layer of meaning I've always found appealing: those two words summed up neatly everything I ever wanted my life to be. Petite anglaise: an English girl who has been translated into French; her life transposed into a French key. For my pen name, or perhaps that should read my mouse name, I took a liberty, dropping the la which should, by rights, precede it: "Petite" became my first name, "Anglaise" my surname. In a few whimsical clicks, an alter ego was born. It's simple enough to identify what made these words such a perfect, obvious pseudonym. But I struggle to divine the source of my deep-seated desire to become a petite anglaise in the first place. What on earth could compel a girl to uproot her whole existence when she had never so much as tasted a genuine croissant? When her childhood holidays seldom took her beyond British shores, and her family tree was firmly rooted in Yorkshire? What was it that caused me to fall in love with the idea of immersing myself in a language and culture which were not my own? And why set my sights on France, in particular? When Tadpole was born, I spent a sleepless night on the maternity ward gazing intently into her inky, newborn eyes, grappling to come to terms with the indisputable fact that this was an actual person looking back at me, not just a version of Mr. Frog, or me, or both, in miniature. From the outset she seemed to know what she wanted, and I realized I could have no inkling of the paths she would choose to follow. But if I watch her life unfold carefully enough, perhaps I will see clear signposts pointing to who or what she will become. Because when I look backward, ransacking my own past for clues with the clarity that only hindsight can bring, a series of defining moments do stand out. Moments charged with significance; snapshots of myself which, if I join the dots together, lead me unswervingly to where I stand today: from French, to France, to Paris, and to P...

Product details

• Authors: Catherine Sanderson
• Publisher: Dell Publishing Inc.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 09.06.2009, delayed
• EAN: 9780385522816
• ISBN: 978-0-385-52281-6
• No. of pages: 304
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries