Clochemerle

Right, Clochemerle. 290 pages down, 90 to go. Gabriel Chevallier's bestseller first appeared in 1934 and is set in the idyllic small town of Clochemerle-en-Beaujolais, where the men are heroic drinkers and the women are buxom. The installation of a new urinoir splits the town into two bitterly-opposed camps, pro and anti, and a provincial civil war breaks out.

Well that's the plot, but actually the book is about its characters, whose cunning, lubricity and hypocrisy are humorously but unsparingly depicted in loving detail. How about the two parish priests, old friends from the seminary, who for 23 years lived in sin with their housekeepers, granting each other absolution every Thursday so that they could be in a state of grace to celebrate Mass at the weekend. Or the notaire who computes his fortune at 4,650,000 francs, his donations to injured soldiers during the 1914-18 war at just 923 francs, but his expenditure on 'secret charities' (involving young persons in Lyon) during the same period at 33,000 francs. So far the provincial warfare has dragged in the Archbishop of Lyon and the Minister of the Interior. I hope it all ends happily ever after.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the wind has stopped. We've just had 24 hours of heavy rain instead.

Things that cost too much in France:
Car insurance
Postage
Books
Batteries