IN THE MERDE FOR LOVE

Name: IN THE MERDE FOR LOVE
Author: Stephen Clarke
ISBN: 1-59691-190-5

by Stephen Clarke ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2006

Graceful in his inappropriateness, tactless only with his readers, Paul as hero provides plenty of good, plain-old inept fun.

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More from Englishman Clarke on the cultural collision he underwent upon his move to France.

As in A Year in the Merde (2005), narrator Paul West stands in for the author. Still itchy in his French skin, Paul finds that when he starts to display signs of outrage, his French girlfriend reminds him, “You are English. You must show your phlegm.” But he is slowly becoming Gallified, learning “how to barge in front of someone to nab a Parisian café table.” Paul is trying to start an English-style tea room in Paris, and he describes all the expected bureaucratic travails, but what is on his mind first and foremost is sex. Yes, he knows how to enjoy a sunset and tuck into the food and tip a glass (he’s turned that last into an art form), but his eye is keen on anatomy. Even when looking at his girlfriend’s mother, he observes that “her buttocks were bouncing around in the nightdress like two bald men trying to escape from a tent.” And to his specific amorous interest, he brings a Wodehousean turn of phrase (if ever Wodehouse had talked of sex): “As soon as your fingers so much as brushed against each other’s skin, the other parts of your body start saying they’d like to join in with this skin-brushing business.” One minute he is worried that his girlfriend has altogether too much knowledge about erections, the next he is appreciative of another woman’s eyes, “curacao blue and apparently back-lit.” Though a slave to his libido, Paul is also a comic, canny observer of French rural customs and English business practices alike. Plus ça change, plus ç’est la même chose.

Graceful in his inappropriateness, tactless only with his readers, Paul as hero provides plenty of good, plain-old inept fun.

Pub Date: May 1, 2006

ISBN: 1-59691-190-5

Page Count: 416

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
MERDE HAPPENS
by Stephen Clarke

- BOOK REVIEW
A YEAR IN THE MERDE
by Stephen Clarke

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)