book review: “a year in the merde”
in case you don’t know, “merde” means “shit”. i borrowed this book from a french flatmate. according to my enormous sampling of 2 french people. it is supposedly accurate. according to one, it makes you laugh because it’s true. i didn’t ask if they thought that it was true was positive or negative. they seemed indifferent. possibly a shrug. the shrug being a commonly mentioned french behaviour to expressing indifferences or “it’s not my problem”. hmm.
the description in the front of the book says that it’s based on things that “may or may not have happened”. i really hate that. either just say that it’s truth or fiction. all fiction is typically based on some truth so there’s no point in trying to skew things. the book also takes place over 9 months (supposedly for french people, the year begins in september and ends at the beginning of may), but the author has lived there for 10 years. i would assume that all of the events probably didn’t happen in a 9 month period. in case you don’t know, the french also have a 35 hour work week (i can’t really say much here since i was only working a 32 hour work week before leaving) and get a bunch of holidays. including i guess the period from may to september.
another repeating theme is pretty much every chapter (month) includes at least one strike by some union. apparently, everyone in paris (france?) is in a union. the ridiculous thing about these strikes is that they apparently don’t ever really resolve anything. the strikes are something you just have to deal with for a couple of days each time. it’s really just like deciding a whole profession is going on holiday for a couple of days. not pleasant when it’s the garbage men or the public transport workers. it’s apparently impossible to fire someone. and i thought it was bad in large american corporations.
overall, it’s entertaining. i actually read it off and on in about 13 hours total. the copy i had was 372 pages, but it was a huge font, practically double spaced and a lot of page margin. the copy linked on amazon is listed at only 288 pages. worth a read.
the main thing i learned from this book is that i don’t want to have anything to do with france. by this, i do not mean french people, more like french culture. of course, listening to my frenchman flat mate complain about it had already turned me off to it anyway. his complaints (which i had heard before reading the book) were the same regarding the work environment and how shit just doesn’t work. i think his only positive for france was 24mbit internet access for cheap. of course, this is someone who lived in paris, moved to london and has no intention of moving back.