The Secret Life of France

This is the best – most intelligent, funniest, and most insightful – book on France by an expat we’ve ever read. Lucy Wadham examines the profound and varied differences between the Anglo-Saxon and French worldviews. Using her own experience, as a wife and mother, and later as an investigative journalist for the BBC, Wadham explores French attitudes towards sex, marriage, adultery, money, work, happiness, war and race. Anyone who devotes a chapter to Sarkozy as ‘sex dwarf’ deserves your attention! The table of contents will give you more of an idea idea of what to expect. And you can check out Wadham’s blog here.

1. Proposal
Driving and Breakfast

2. The Secret Garden
Slap and Tickle, Guilt and Parking
Adultery and the Cult of Beauty

3. Being a Woman
La Libido, La Femme Fatale and the Sisterhood

4. Truth versus Beauty
Tragedy, Comedy and Historic French Losers
Television, Hypocrisy and Ideas

5. The Wedding
Catholicism, Anti-Semitism and Le Pen
Language, Yoghurt and Hot Rabbits

6. Sublime, Necessarily Sublime
Mayors, Mass Demonstration and Mayhem
Nobility, Freedom and Status

7. Maternity
Glory, Breastfeeding and the Norm

8. Education
Freud, Maths and the Cult of Reason
Smiley, Happy People

9. The Past
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
French Rudeness, Surrender and Betrayal
Collaboration and Defeat

10. Foreign Affairs
Cake and Spies
Anti-Americanism and La Force de Frappe

11. Tolérance Zéro
Cops and Spooks
France’s War on Terror

12. Sarkozy and the End of Ideology
Sex Dwarves and the Patriarchy
The Society of the Spectacle and the End of the Secret Garden

13. Black, Blanc, Beur
Football, Rap and Role Models

14. Epilogue
Douce France