Books like This is Life
This is Life
This is really a 2.5. I'm giving it a 3 because I just don't like quirky comedy, and therefore I think my failure to connect with This is Life is in some sense just a category error - I probably shouldn't have read this book in the first place. This is one of those books that is is all about madcap gamine characters, all with tragic pasts, but all terribly good looking, with a penchant for getting into wacky amusing scrapes and comically droll misunderstandings on their way to neatly tied up happy endings. For good measure, the book is salted with a great deal of scatological description, drolly (yes, that word comes up a lot in connection with my feelings about this book) phrased using infantile words like "wee" and "poo." If that doesn't make the book approachable and jolly enough for you, there's some really broad English/French humorous skirmishing, including mocking Carla Bruni and the euro. Oh and also a preternaturally good and adorable baby (just for good measure)!Did I mention that this ready-for-filming comedy takes place in Paris? Of course it does. Not a very racinated Paris, but at least we know that Montmartre, the shopping streets of the Marais, and the Place des Vosges square are the novelist's preferred shooting locations.(To give you a flavor of the movie I think this was written with an eye to: Hugh Grant would be the male lead if he were 20 years younger (not sure who the contemporary equivalent is), Anne Hathaway would clearly play the female lead.) How can I give this book which I obviously despised a 3? Well, because, as noted, I think on some level this is my fault for reading it in the first place. I hate rom-coms. I found Amelie saccharine (and this book is Amelie's wacky written-by-an-Englishman little sister). I like my French films dark and kinky, preferably with Jean Seberg in a striped top. I was never going to like this book. So, yes, ratings wise, I'm abstaining and copping out. It was quite readable. I'll give it that. And maybe you like drollery a la francaise. So, a 3 for now.
