Ahem... France again

A couple more French books today, both very different to each other but both got five star ratings from me on Goodreads due to their readability and that feeling that both authors had poured a lot of love and effort into their individual projects.

First up, Cruel Crossing: Escaping Hitler Across the Pyrenees by Edward Stourton.

I knew that many refugees and escaped prisoners were helped out of France by the French Resistance during World War 2 but details of the route they took were sketchy in my head. I think I thought they all went through Switzerland or out via the south of France to Gibralter. And quite a few actually did but it seems many also went via various escape routes, The Pat Line, The Comet Line etc., which ran down through France to the Pyrenees and thus into Spain. The people helped included allied airmen who had been shot down over Germany, France or Belgium, persecuted Jews, resistance members for whom life had become too dangerous in France and so on. This non-fiction account tells the stories of so many very brave people that it would be impossible to recount them all here. Plus this not a book primarily about The Pyrennees, there's a lot more general information about the war and how it affected the French population. Vichy France is discussed in detail, colaboration... I had no idea there was a sort of offical French colaboration force in the south of France called The Milice. Many of the Resistance considered these people worse than the Germans. The author himself undertakes The Chemin de Liberté, one of the main escape routes over The Pyrenees, to get an idea of what it was like although it can never compare with having to do it in appalling weather, exhausted, with the threat of capture a constant threat. There isn't a lot about his walk though, mainly this is an excellent historical account of bravery in the face of appalling danger and cruelty. I gave this five stars on Goodreads as I learnt such a lot and it really is a very well written book.

Next, My Good Life in France by Janine Marsh.

Janine Marsh lives in London with her husband, Mark; she has a good, well paid job and no reason to move to another country. What she does do is pop regularly over to France on day trips to buy wine: it's only an hour and a half by ferry across the English Channel. On one of these forays, quite by accident really, they end up viewing several properties for sale and Janine falls in love with a wreck of a place in the Seven Valleys in Northern France. The couple buy it and set about renovating it, visiting every weekend they can manage. Then the recession arrives and Mark is made redundant. He drops the bombshell that he would like to move to France on a permanent basis. Janine is completely torn. Half of her loves her job... she is about to be promoted... half of her is drawn to their little house in France and the way of life. What the heck is she going to do?

Well, no prizes for guessing what the author decides to do and reading all about it was sheer delight. It's not an area where there are heaps of ex-pats so assimilating into the local village, becoming part of the community, was very necessary in order to survive. And, as I discovered when my late sister-in-law moved to France twenty years ago, the locals are nearly always very friendly. But you have to adapt to their ways, no use going there and expecting them to change for you. Why the heck should they? And, like us Brits, they have their quirks, especially when it comes to language, so many subtleties you need to learn because mistakes can be embarrassing. For instance if you're invited to a party, never ever turn up on time. It's considered rude... half an hour late is fine, two hours late is even better. And so on and so on. I thoroughly enjoyed this very personal look at the French way of life... how two hapless Brits managed to survive and fit into what sounds like a gorgeous area. Loved reading about their neighbours, their animals, their exploration of the area, it was all delightful. Janine Marsh's website, The Good Life in France is well worth a visit for all kinds of info and lovely pics. You can also follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

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