Milk with Wine

In 1963, eight-year-old Meg is swept off to Paris for a year with her family. A precocious child raised in an English enclave of Montreal, she speaks no French at all. Her parents enrol her at a strict Parisian school, where she is treated like the village idiot by teacher and classmates alike.

‘Madame examined me as though I were an insect and gabbled at me incomprehensibly. She made announcements. To my horror, the little girls dipped nib pens into inkpots and began to write. Watching my classmates, I tried to copy their actions, never having seen a nib pen before.

I pressed too hard, tore the page, splattered ink and snapped the nib.
Madame seized my blotched notebook and shouted at me. I swallowed back tears. Titters ran through the class.

Madame handed me a pencil and watched as I printed my name.
“Mon dieu!” she muttered. Then she jabbed her finger at the paper and said, “Histoire.”

Realizing this was some sort of spelling test, I printed e-a-s-t-w-a-r-r-e.

She slapped her forehead. “Imbecile!”

I dutifully wrote a-m-b-a-y-s-e-e-l.’

Meg is indignant at French customs. Pissoires on the boulevard! Chocolate laced with liquor! Children not allowed to play outside! Forced to learn French, horrified by a tuberculosis diagnosis, chilled by JFK’s assassination, and wistful for friends, Meg struggles to survive. But there are also magical moments: glittering puppet plays in the Tuileries, delicious artichokes, the spectacular film Cleopatra, a quaint house in Montmartre, street urchin friends, and hot baguettes for breakfast.