Peter Mayle may have spent a year in Provence, but Harriet Welty Rochefort writes from the wise perspective of one who has spent more than twenty-years living among the French. From a small town in Iowa to the City of Light, Harriet has done what so many of dream of one-day doing-she picked up and moved to France. But, it has not been twenty-years of fun and games; Harriet has endured her share of cultural bumps, bruises, and psychic adjustments along the way.
In French Toast, she shares her hard-earned wisdom and does as much as one woman can to demystify the French. She makes sense of their ever-so-French thoughts on food, money, sex, love, marriage, manners, schools, style, and much more. She investigates such delicate matters as how to eat asparagus, how to approach Parisian women, how to speak to merchants, how to drive, and, most important, how to make a seven-course meal in a silk blouse without an apron! Harriet's first-person account offers both a helpful reality check and a lot of very funny moments.
"French Toast includes the most delightful barbs at France's subtle but deep-rooted codes of behavior...I read the book on the EuroStar between Paris and London and wished the train had not reached its tip speed of 300 kph!"
Leslie Caron, star of An American in Paris, Gigi, and Lili
"When someone calls you mon cher ami, does in literally mean 'dear friend', or, as is often the case, 'drop dead'?...Do you eat a round Camembert cheese the same way as a rectangular slab of Gruyere?...Should you shower before making love?...Rochefort offers answers by the score. Even longtime foreign residents of France have become grateful readers."
