Bon Courage!

Rating:
Summary: Light and entertaining read!
Review: For the most part I enjoyed Mr. Wiles' story of the trials and tribulations of property renovation in rural France. The characters in the book are portrayed in a realistic and honest manner. His portrayal of the house and its surroundings also comes to life as he describes its condition in detail. It's almost as if you are there yourself looking at the house. The only issues I have with the book are that (1) it goes into exhaustive detail about each renovation project. This gets a bit tiresome and, frankly, I skipped over several spots in the book. Secondly, some of his "accidents" seem a bit contrived and fake. For instance, he gets out of bed to go to the bathroom and trips over something which then makes him fall down the ladder, which then results in him falling face first in manure. It almost sounds like Abbott and Costello slapstick sort of stuff. Not really believable - just exaggerated for its entertainment value. There's a fair amount of "fake" sounding mishaps throughout the book. Other than those two areas of irritation, the book was well written, funny and worth reading.