Have you ever walked into a half-empty Parisian restaurant, only to be told that it’s “complet”? Attempted to say “merci beaucoup” and accidentally complimented someone’s physique? Been overlooked at the boulangerie due to your adherence to the bizarre foreign custom of waiting in line?

Well, you’re not alone. Internationally bestselling author of A Year in the Merde, Stephen Clarke has been there too, and he is here to help. In Talk to the Snail, Clarke distills the fruits of years spent in the French trenches into a handy (and hilarious) book of commentary and advice. Read this book, and find out how to get good service from the grumpiest waiter; be exquisitely polite and brutally rude at the same time; and employ the language of l’amour and le sexe. Clarke also illuminates some of the reasons the French get under our skins: How can they work only 35 hours a week and yet still go on strike? Why are they so convinced of their own superiority? And what’s this myth about French women not getting fat?

Packed with useful phrases, candid tips, and deft intercultural analysis, Talk to the Snail is a must-have guide to getting what you want from the French.

If you are a first-time traveler to France begin with Commandment 9- it will save you loads of unnecessary aggravation as you wait to be served and then if you are a single Anglo-Saxon male next up is commandment 11-it will keep you from sabotaging a relationship with a French woman. The rest can be read in numerical sequence.
–Terrance Gelenter

Stephen Clarke and Terrance Gelenter
I recently caught up with Stephen in Paris for a crème at Les Deux Magots where he revealed that Merde has been so good to him that he was able to quit his day job and concentrate full-time on writing books.

Next up is an as yet untitled depiction of the motor trip across America that he recently completed with his French girlfriend. His continuing quest to understand the French takes him to an IHOP (International House of Pancakes) in Louisiana where confronted with a menu offering 50 varieties of maple syrup his English mind imagines low-fat, low sodium, high fat, etc. and la française is thinking 1999, 2001- quite logical from her perspective.