Petite Anglaise

My latest gym book, Petite Anglaise by Catherine Sanderson, was quite the hidden gem! It looked like a run-of-the-mill chick lit novel, but upon closer inspection, I saw that it was actually a memoir. Catherine decided early on that she wanted to live in Paris. And, after studying abroad in college, she never went back to her native England. She quickly found herself in a committed relationship with a Frenchman--although he wouldn't marry her--and they had a child together. When their daughter was a toddler, their relationship cooled, and Catherine was looking for a creative outlet, so she started a blog and adopted the persona Petite Anglaise.

Of course, her relationship falls apart, and she actually starts dating [spoiler alert] one of her blog readers . . . all of which she recorded in real time as she was blogging. But more than just a recap of what she blogged about, the book talks about how blogging affected her life and her decisions. "I was anonymous," she writes, "I went about my business incognito, and yet there I lingered in the minds of complete strangers." Later, when telling a friend that she keeps seeing a guy she's not that interested in to spice up her blog, her friend says, "You might want to try putting yourself first, and not that blog of yours . . . don't live your life to please your readers."

I haven't read Julie and Julia, but I did just see the movie (which is fabulous!!) and some of the same themes crop up there. Julie's husband accuses her of being self-absorbed as she puts everything else on hold to cook her way through all the recipes so as not to disappoint her readers. Catherine, too, is accused of becoming self-centered and not paying attention to what her friends are going through. As Julie says in the movie, blogs are inherently ego-centric. (Yes, I realize I'm saying this on my blog. Whatever.) I'll be interested to see if more blogs-turned-into-books address the role of the blog in the writer's life. In any case, Petite Anglaise was a great read, and much more captivating than most of the chick lit that's coming out these days.