Monsieur Mediocre: One American Learns the High Art of Being Everyday French

Vanity Fair writer von Sothen delights in this wry narrative about the gritty, grumpy realities of being an American adjusting to the Gallic lifestyle. In lighthearted essays, von Sothen describes how his life changed after marrying a French actor named Anais, who convinced him to move to Paris, he deadpans, by “shooting me in the neck with a dart gun and bundling me off.” But, as Anais is “technically a countess” and has an 18th-century country home in Normandy, he acknowledges his landing was nicely cushioned. His quippy observations of 15 years living in France include the French way of overpreparing for trips (“Vacations are not just times to relax in France, they’re subtle status symbols”), his linguistic shortcomings (“I speak French like Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks English”), and discovering that Fox News had reported that his Paris neighborhood was a “No-Go Zone” because of Muslim riots (while “my neighborhood wasn’t a ‘caliphate of Paristinians’... it wasn’t a cake walk either”). Von Sothen does a nice job of not just listing culture-clash gags (he works sometimes as a stand-up comic and this style of humor is apparent throughout) but showing the ways in which a person can adapt over time, such as how he vowed to become an “engaged citizen” when Emmanuel Macron was elected president. With self-deprecating humor, von Sothen wonderfully gives an insider’s take on living life as an outsider. (May)