Merde Actually

Merde Actually
by Stephen Clarke
reviewed by Adelynn

This is not the best book to read in public if you're the type who shy away from attention. Your sniggers/snorts/attempts to control your fits will draw curious eyes onto you, then to the title. I embarrassed myself on the bus home this evening when I couldn't stop grinning inanely to myself and nearly went into a silent laughing fit complete with shaking shoulders.

The follow-up to A Year in the Merde, Englishman Paul West continues to run into some (comic) cultural misunderstandings and is facing various troubles leading up to the opening of his English tea room.

This novel is the literary version of a slapstick comedy, high in visual imagery and full of naughty insinuations. It's Mr Bean or Stephen Chow on paper. Some examples which got me biting my lips to prevent the unladylike snorts from emerging:

After having strawberries in the forms of tarts, cakes, mousse, in red wine or just plain, at various houses in the afternoon...

"I struggled gamely through the meal until it came to the strawberries, when I really could not force another one of the shiny, red bastards down my throat."

Meeting his prospective new flatmates...

"'Come into ear.' Fortunately, I was used to French accents and knew that Marie was inviting me into the living room rather than suggesting aural sex."

"'But you like free ends?'
I didn't know how to answer Marie's question. She seemed to be back in her 'come into my ear' territory.
'Free ends?'
'Yes, you know. Hoss, shorn lair.'
A horse with a shorn what? This was getting weirder by the minute."

The hot summer in the countryside...

"I drank a sip of congratulations, and felt it instantly shoot out of my pores as sweat."