Merde Happens
Hell is an American road trip with a French passenger
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3.2 • 5 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
Paul West is in deep financial merde. His only way out of debt is to accept a decidedly dodgy job:
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It involves him touring America in a Mini, while pretending to be typically British.
Also in the car is Paul's French girlfriend, Alexa, and his American poet friend, Jake, whose main aim in life is to sleep with a woman from every country in the world. Preferably in the back of Paul's Mini.
But as the little car battles from New York to Miami, leg-room turns out to be the least of Paul's troubles. His work is being sabotaged, his tour plans are in tatters, and his love life becomes a Franco-American war zone.
And as Paul knows better than anyone, when you mix love and war - merde happens...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this entertaining third installment to his Paul West series, British journalist Clarke sets his acerbic sights on America. Paul, an ex-pat Brit running a tearoom in Paris, commits a grievous crime when he presents English menus at his tearoom. The Ministry of Culture slaps him with a massive fine, and a broke Paul returns to London and accepts a position with Visitor Resources: Britain to represent his home country in a global tourism contest. So, with his Parisian girlfriend in tow, Paul heads for America, picks up an embarrassingly decorated Mini Cooper in New York and heads to Boston, Miami, New Orleans, Las Vegas and Los Angeles in an effort to win the prize. Trouble follows, of course, and what makes the transcontinental romp so much fun is Clarke's sarcastic sendup of each city, embellishing the traditional stereotypes of each with a dry, jaded Brit wit. (The magazines found in a Louisiana home include "Sniper's Gazette, Drive-by Weekly, Firing Squad Monthly. Standard stuff.") Peripheral characters add even more color to the madcap story, and while not all of Clarke's stabs at the states hit their marks, the ones that do are sublime.
