Petite Anglaise, the book

OK, I can't deny it, I'm a nosey parker. Being a fiction writer I can excuse myself on the grounds of collecting material. That's why I'm so intrigued by people and the things they do. That's why I'm such a gossip. And that's why I love personal blogs.

It's also why I was hooked on Petite Anglaise's blog when her life got so intriguing, around the time she started having an affair and left her partner of eight years. And why I got frustrated when she felt unable (understandably) to blog every last detail of her personal life. And, therefore, why her book is so very satisfying.

It's not the book of the blog, not at all. Very little material is taken directly or indirectly from her website. A better description would be that Petite Anglaise: In Paris. In Love. In trouble is the book behind the blog. Not only does she fill us in on the background of how she came to be in Paris in the first place, she also describes how it felt when her blog started to become the immensely popular soap opera of her life, and to what extent she started to live her life in order to colour her blog.

That in itself is fascinating, but she also fills in the details behind all those necessarily cryptic and teasing blog posts. What actually happened the week she posted her open letter to her partner? How exactly did it feel to have a passionate relationship with one of her blog readers, and how did that affair end? It's not surprising that a big-nose such as myself should have become glued to this book and unable to put it down.

But it's not just about the material. Catherine Sanderson has a real knack for describing intense experiences in a way which is compelling as well as instantly recognisable to anyone who has ever felt anything. As a francophile myself, I particularly loved the passages describing her love affair with France and the joy of visiting France for the first time as a teenager, but I could also relate to her descriptions of falling in love (both as an adolescent and an adult), and of the hard slog involved in being a working mum. And of course, having visited her in Paris I loved being able to picture the streets and parks of Belleville exactly as she describes them, not to mention her immensely cute daughter Tadpole.

Cath has a real way with words, a great ability to tell a story, and what really makes this story bite is her honesty. Her commenters have sometimes criticised her, for being a bad mother, a bad partner, a self-involved lover. But who hasn't been all of these things? If she weren't so unflinching in describing her failings, there'd be nothing for her critics to latch onto.

We all knew Cath had a talent for blog-writing, but there was no reason it should translate into book-writing - where an overall narrative, a higher standard of language and a flow which lasts longer than a blog post are all required. Well, she did all that. And now I can look forward to reading the novel she's writing next.


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