Building Your Castle and Living Like a King in France by Gerald Doucet (1995) is a memoir of collective castle-building, set in Paris, France, from 1983 to 1994.
‘With a few tips you too can flourish in French society without really crying,’ asserts Frenchman Gerald Doucet.
A collective of eight families – called the Montmartre Eight (M-8) – build and live in a castle, starting with developing the blueprint with an architect to moving in and facing new challenges, such as noise, disputes, growing children, gossip, affairs, and divorce. They, of course, do not actually live in Montmartre – while the situation is real, the castle location and the individual families remain undisclosed.
Gerald Doucet begins with the ‘leaders of the pack’ – the individuals who make the majority of the decisions and management of the ‘build.’ Each family lives in apartment spaces ranging from 150-180 square metres (1,600-1,900 square feet) within the castle on an adequate block of land.
By 1988, five years from the start, the castle ‘had life, the smell of good food, the laughter of children, and one very large mud hole that we set about to groom with trees and grass.’ At the time of writing, M-8 have been together for 10 years, going through various stages of cooperation and conflict, but with a ‘surprising cohesion’ between them.
This book is not only about advice on building a castle and dealing with architects, construction workers, and government regulations, but it also includes how to greet each other, whom to kiss and when to shake hands, buying food at the market, how to invite the French to dinner, what to serve, where to school your children, and where to go on vacation. It is well-written, fast-paced, authentic, and hilariously funny.
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MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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