Reflections on living in provincial France in nostalgic book entitled FRENCH BRED by Paul Bruthiaux

June 5, 2012 - PRLog -- FRENCH BRED tells of growing up in a small Catholic town before finding emotional release in London. It explores the delights of childhood, the frustrations of adolescence, and the hopes of early adulthood, with anecdotes recounted by family members evoking earlier aspects of provincial life. The tone is wistful, upbeat, and reflective. The book will charm, inform, and challenge preconceptions about all things French.


About the Book:  

Paul Bruthiaux was born in France. At eighteen, he moved to London to learn English and lived there for two decades. He has a PhD in linguistics and has taught in universities in the USA and Southeast Asia. His work on language has been published by Oxford University Press and in various scholarly journals. In French Bred, he draws a straight line through the meanderings.


Excerpt from the book:

“At the start of my second year of English, Monsieur Messener made a rare pedagogical blunder: he assigned me a seat immediately behind the first girl in the class to wear a bra. I was growing up among four sisters, two of whom were already of bra-wearing age. I had seen bras drying on laundry lines and of course in the window of the lingerie shop in the middle of town. But this was different.

   On warm days especially, the bra's owner, a tall, friendly girl named Isabelle, wore the kind of plain white shirt favoured by many of her peers with neither the inclination nor the means to turn themselves into fashion models. But perhaps because Isabelle was growing faster than her parents could afford to satisfy her need for ever larger clothes, her shirt seemed to my alert eye to fit her rather tightly. Whenever she leaned back in her seat, to peer at something important on the blackboard or to relax by gazing out of the window, the shirt hung loosely and the bra faded from view. But when she leaned forward over her desk because she needed to write something down or study the textbook closely, the shirt tightened again and the outline of the bra was restored to its full glory.”


FRENCH BRED: GROWING UP PROVINCIAL IN A BYGONE FRANCE can be ordered  from Amazon.com at:

http://www.amazon.com/French-Bred-Growing-Provincial-Bygo...

Media Contact:

Publisher:  New Generation Publishing
Contact:  Daniel Cooke
E-mail:  daniel@newgenerationpublishing.info
Tel.:  01933 665 340