Buy This Book

Mark Greenside is an old friend and former college roommate, a teacher and published short story writer, and now author of a smart and funny book - - I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do) - - and after reading an advance copy I have but one thing to say to you fellow holiday shoppers and lovers of good writing:

Buy This Book, especially if you have traveled to Europe and wondered, as you walked through little, picture-postcard-perfect towns, "What would it be like to buy a little place here?"

Then imagine you are my friend Mark: you have never owned a home anywhere - - in fact, you eschew owning property of most any kind.

Also, you 'speak,' shall we say, little actual French (this I witnessed during a summer more than 40 years ago when a group of us UW undergrads hitchhiked and free-loaded through Europe), and because you have held socially-redemptive, but low-paying jobs, you have no money to acquire a complete house that nice neighbors you met on another vacation to France decades later have decided you shall acquire.

What do you do with this improbable tale after ending up with a cool house in a cool spot - - Brittany, France! - - that all your friends now want to visit so they can continue their freeloading ways?

You write a book about it - - how it happened, what you learned along the way, and what it's like to now have a foot in two cultures.

So congratulations to Mark: it's a long way from Elm Drive C and Mendota Ct., oui?

Update: The New York Times Book Editors like it.