C'est La Vie

LoveReading Says

From the grand designs of an initial Les Champs Créatifs writing school idea, through the escalating mayhem of an ever-expanding menagerie (including a clutch of hens named after songs by The Kinks), Ian Moore’s C’est La Vie memoir is a brilliantly funny book for folks who dream of living a new life in a new land. Spoiler alert: reality rarely aligns with said dreams.

In this case, think Escape to the Chateau, but with less chateau, less driven by interior design details, and more animal antics and excrement.

Throughout, Moore’s turns of phrase are likely to have readers LOL-ing ‘til the goats come home. Which is a very long time indeed, given that the family’s goats have a pesky habit of vanishing. For example, Moore describes a flag-festooned school production as looking “like UKIP doing Bugsy Malone”, and conjures the Tour de France caravane warm-up as “a heavily branded episode of Wacky Races”.

Then there’s the time he realises that cycling might not be his cup of tea: “I bow to no-one in my admiration for Bradley Wiggins and his achievements, but some mods, it seems, just don’t belong on bikes.”

Loaded with hilarious grumpy dad-ness and musings on the possibility of “late night mammal–marsupial swinging action”, and whether “incestuous homosexuality [is] a goat trait” (for a few prime examples), C’est La Vie is a fine follow-up to the author’s Vive Le Chaos.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
More reviews by Joanne Owen

About C'est La Vie

Follow the misadventures of Ian Moore as he chronicles the charming and chaotic escapades of his family and their eccentric assembly of animals, on their continued search for serenity in rural France.

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