INSTRUCTIONS FOR VISITORS

Le village is a small town at the southwesternmost tip of France. Here a young Englishwoman fell in love with France, the French and one Frenchman in particular. In her seductive, lyrical and witty memoir Helen Stevenson writes not as an expat but as someone adopted by villagers as one of their own. By Stefan, the Maoist tennis fanatic, who lives off his lover in solidarity with the unemployed; by Gigi, the chic boutique owner who dresses her ex-lovers’ girlfriends; and by Luc, the crumpled cowboy painter and part-time dentist, who comes to embody both the joys and the difficulties of transplanting oneself into someone else’s country, culture and heart.