Petite Anglaise

April 28, 2008
From the moment she started French lessons at her Yorkshire grammar school, Sanderson was hooked on all things French. Soon she found herself a pen pal in Lyons whom she just had to visit, and then an exchange job or two in France after graduation. Before long, she was living full-time in Paris with the French boyfriend (aka “Mr. Frog”) who'd fathered her daughter. The office job that made her French dream possible wasn't exactly riveting, but one day, when she was roaming the Internet, she discovered the world of bloggers. She created her own, christening herself “Petite Anglaise,” and gave birth to her very own “alter ego.” At first, being Petite Anglaise gave Sanderson a vehicle for commenting on the lifestyles of the French; gradually, it became a sounding board for her domestic discontents. Not only was her blog an enormous hit, she also began to enjoy the attentions of one of Petite Anglaise's online fans. Naturally—as any romance reader could predict—she ditched Mr. Frog in favor of the online lover. Sanderson's memoir is compulsively readable, especially since she's jazzed up the basic romance formula with all the issues around blogging, like the problem of Petite Anglaise being “wittier and sexier” than she is.

June 15, 2008
In 2004, a British secretary living in Paris turned on her PC, and the blog Petite Anglaise (www.petiteanglaise.com) was born. (The author was nicknamed Petite Anglaise by a boyfriend's father.) Four years later, that blog has become this book, which details many aspects of Sanderson's Parisian existence. A decade living in France gave the author a lot to write about, including a long-term relationship that produced a child but ended when she met someone else through her blog. Sanderson takes readers on a fascinating tour of her life that spotlights some lovely Parisian sights along the way. In some of her earlier blog posts, many of which appear here, Sanderson frequently mentioned her struggle to reconcile the two parts of her personaher blogging self and her "real-life" self. With this book, she succeeds in filling the blog's gaps. A well-written account by a Francophile; recommended for public and larger academic llibraries.Erica Swenson Danowitz, Delaware Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Media, PA

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2008
Sanderson joins the growing list of bloggers whose writing has been adapted from the computer screen to the page. In her first book, she writes about her blog, Petite Anglaise, the journal of a young British woman living in Paris. She reveals the details of her struggling relationship with her long-term boyfriend, Mr. Frog, and the joys and frustrations of raising their toddler daughter, Tadpole. She becomes part of a community of bloggers, and her life is irrevocably changed when she has an affair with a reader. Sanderson depicts an unfamiliar, less-romantic Paris: one of days at the office, walks through the neighborhood park, and trips to the grocery store. Readers wont miss the clich's and will instead be taken by Sandersons poignant, honest portrait of everyday life. Reading such intimate details can seem voyeuristic, but they also make the book hard to put down.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)