Tout Sweet: Hanging Up My High Heels for a New Life in France

by Karen Wheeler

Overview

In her mid-thirties, fashion editor Karen has it all: a handsome boyfriend, a fab flat in west London, and an array of gorgeus shoes. But when her boyfriend, Eric, leaves she makes an unexpected decision: to hang up her Manolos and wave good-bye to her glamorous city lifestyle to go it alone in a run-down house in rural Poitou-Charentes, central western France.

Tout Sweet is the perfect read for anyone who dreams of chucking away their BlackBerry in favor of real blackberrying and downshifting to a romantic, alluring locale where new friendships–and new loves–are just some of the treasures to be found amongst life's simple pleasures.

Customer Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402261190
Publisher:	Sourcebooks, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	392,057
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Karen Wheeler is a former fashion editor for the Mail on Sunday and current writer for the Financial Times 'How to Spend It' magazine and London's Daily Mail. Her work has appeared in the Evening Standard and You magazines, Sunday Times Style and numerous international publications. Visit Karen at toutsweet.net and Twitter @mimipompom1.

Table of Contents

Note From the Author v

Chapter 1 Which Way to Portsmouth? 1

Chapter 2 The House That Found Me 17

Chapter 3 Miranda 31

Chapter 4 Full Moon 51

Chapter 5 Let My New Life Begin 71

Chapter 6 Camping Out 88

Chapter 7 Moving In 106

Chapter 8 Lonely in La Rochelle 121

Chapter 9 Patisserie and Poetry 127

Chapter 10 Word Games 143

Chapter 11 Miranda's Birthday 155

Chapter 12 Pink Cocktails in Paris 170

Chapter 13 Progress 179

Chapter 14 The Antiques Dealer of Angouleme 191

Chapter 15 The Long, Graceful Good-bye 207

Chapter 16 Summer 228

Chapter 17 Pie Night 239

Chapter 18 A Minx in Anzac 250

Chapter 19 Christmas Day 274

Chapter 20 New Year's Eve 288

Chapter 21 Gone 300

Chapter 22 The Bridge to the Ile de Ré 308

About the Author 313

Editorial Reviews

In this buoyant read, Wheeler describes how she led a glamorous but empty life of "blissful complacency" as a London magazine editor, filled with beautiful parties, countless shoes and dresses, and plans to marry a Frenchman. A year later, at 35, she's without a fiancé or a job and has bought a fixer-upper with no heat or hot water in a remote French village—"a long way from anyone's idea of the charming French house." To recover from the lingering devastation of the breakup, Wheeler decides she needs to begin anew. A pampered city girl, the plucky author adapts surprisingly well to the rural lifestyle. In the absence of a supermarket or decent restaurants for miles, she lives on bread and cheese for months until she has a functioning kitchen, and becomes adept at home cooking, varnishing floors, building a fire, negotiating with countless French workmen, and even beheading a turkey for Christmas dinner. Wheeler offers a charming chronicle of transforming her unloved and neglected maison into a real home and repairing her broken heart in the process. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"If you are in the mood for a relationship memoir that takes place in a foreign country, this is the book for you."

"I loved Karen's straightforward writing and her humor made me chuckle more than once."

"I felt as though I walked alongside Wheeler as she explored her new run down house in the village or the countryside she so clearly describes throughout the book."

"Her writing is clear and concise yet descriptive, and crisp."

"The author wrote with a sensuality for life and for home that made me long to have something like that."

From the Publisher