Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette: On the Road in the Real Rural France

Yet another 'Brit moves Abroad' saga, but I enjoyed it. Light-hearted and humorous, it's not a great literary work, doesn't require too much deep thought, but does what is says on the tin, which is to entertain. Worth a read.

serge bastarde ate my baguette (0/0 people found this helpful)

This is the first book I have ever read. I found it funny, interesting, hard to put down and a pleasure to read. It as also quite informative.

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Enjoyable light read with some good insights into France (0/3 people found this helpful)

This could have done with a proof-read from someone with really good French [things like: the famous 19th Century farting performer spelled le Petomaine instead of le Pétomane, a male character called so and so the Lyonnaise (feminine) instead of Lyonnais, saucissons and chips - should be saucisses, saussisons are hard salamis that you slice...] and there were some saccharine "mystical" moments that I found out of place [eg. characters are musing on three deceased loved-ones and if there is life after death and wishing they could have a "sign," - suddenly three escaped horses canter up and stand highlighted against the setting sun]. Otherwise I found this good fun with some enjoyable characters and memorable incidents and I thought it had some interesting insights into some less well-known aspects of French life. I disagree with the reviewer who said it was just a typical "expat has some amusing experiences in France" book, it was indeed a considerable cut above, as another person said. One thing that is oddly absent from the back cover ("travel writing"), inside pages, preface or anywhere else is any indication of how much is meant to be true life and how much is made up. I find it hard to believe all the various colourful episodes described really took place (some of the bits where Serge tries to con people out of furniture they don't know is valuable are very similar to Roald Dahl stories, for example, and some others are just a bit far-fetched especially if we are supposed to believe they all happened to this one person) - and I find it hard to believe (as someone who's lived in France three years) that "Bastarde" is "not an uncommon surname in France," as the book claims at one point! (just in case I was wrong I did a French white pages search for Bastarde in Paris and got zero hits). Must admit the quirky title made me smile though.

A minor gem. (3/3 people found this helpful)

A title that references a celebrated Sun newspaper headline is not designed to lure me in, but I'm very glad I overcame my reservations. This is a minor gem.
As the title suggests, Dummer is not the hero of his own story. Rather he is the chronicler (and sometimes unwitting accessory) in a series of (mis-) adventures, and he undertakes the task with humour, insight, compassion and a palpably growing affection for the book's roguish anti-hero, for whom the casual purloining of an unwatched baguette is the very least of his misdemeanours.
If it helps to picture a Gallic combination of Daley and Trotter, you're not too far wrong.
But don't expect the usual `hilarious' tales of cultural dissonance or the smug condescension of second home-buying, dilettante Brits. After years living with the uncertainties of the music industry, in the UK, Dummer and his wife Helen decamped to south west France in the Eighties - in a decision that seems almost breathtakingly whimsical - to reinvent themselves as operators in the even more precarious, French rural antiques trade and brocante markets. And there they have been ever since, absorbed into the community of brocanteurs and competing on equal terms in a far from easy, hand-to-mouth endeavour, where, at least for M'sieu Bastarde, morals are necessarily flexible and sometimes a dispensable luxury.
Funny, affectionate, and even, on occasion, genuinely edgy.

Serge Bastarde ate my baguette (0/0 people found this helpful)

A very enjoyable read. Humerous anecdotes of how Serge rips off the unsuspecting inhabitants of the rural community. I would love to have had a bit more padding about other aspects of John's life in France but perhaps he is saving this for a future book, I do hope so.

Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette: On the Road in the Real Rural France

John Dummer

Reader Reviews:

Enjoyable (0/0 people found this helpful)

serge bastarde ate my baguette (0/0 people found this helpful)

Enjoyable light read with some good insights into France (0/3 people found this helpful)

A minor gem. (3/3 people found this helpful)

Serge Bastarde ate my baguette (0/0 people found this helpful)

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