Don 2007-11-7 00:56
Why can’t the English be more like the French?
[quote]About the author: Hortense de Monplaisir is from a very old French family who did not need to buy their particule. After studying at Sciences Po, one of the grandes écoles, or top universities, she married a grosse légume in banking and has made a career embellishing his grey world with her vivacious conversation and colourful table displays.
Thanks to her expatriation, her children are bilingual and au fait with binge drinking culture, while preferring to sip Orangina and dance le rock taught by a maître danseur from Paris. She and her husband live in London, but have homes in Paris’s Left Bank and in the Luberon, as well as one-tenth of the family manoir in Brittany.
An incisive observer of the English, she remains French through and through. Her interests include le scrapbooking, painting on porcelain and organising holidays in Verbier, St Barts and the Ile de Ré.
She has an exceptional IQ and is a member of French Mensa.
About the translator: Sarah Long is the author of two novels, And What Do You Do? and The Next Best Thing. She lived for 10 years in Paris, where she met Hortense at a wine-tasting, leading to a lifelong friendship of such intensity that she paraphrases Flaubert in claiming: “Madame de Monplaisir, c’est moi!” [/quote] [url]http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_extracts/article2799528.ece[/url]