"PETITE ANGLAISE"
By Catherine Sanderson
Published: June 17, 2008
Genre: Nonfiction, autobiography

Catherine Sanderson writes with such honesty that it will be hard to put her book down.

HOW WOULD YOU feel if you got kicked out of school for something you wrote on your blog under a pseudonym?

Catherine Sanderson was blogging under the pseudonym "Petite Anglaise" in 2004 until her employers recognized her photo on the blog and fired her.

Sanderson never identified herself or anyone else in her postings, so she took her employers to court and won two years worth of salary. She made headlines, her blog received many visitors, and eventually she got a book deal.

I stumbled onto the book while browsing in a bookstore this summer. After reading the volume, titled "Petite Anglaise: In Paris, in Love, in Trouble," I read her blog, also titled "Petite Anglaise."

Sanderson began the blog in 2004 in Paris after the birth her daughter. A British ex-pat on maternity leave, she was feeling a bit bored and isolated.

"I was trapped at home with my young daughter. I couldn't leave the house so I began writing,” said Sanderson.

She thought a blog would be a harmless diversion to amuse herself that few would see. She also thought it would be a nice way to document her growing daughter.

Petite blogged about her daughter and love life, and continued to write after she returned to work.

She writes about the fading romance with her French partner and father of her child, Mr. Frog, and her daughter, Tadpole, as well as her "very old school" boss and his sometimes-draconian ways. Sanderson used pseudonyms to preserve the privacy of all involved, including herself.

Petite describes the company she works for, which was revealed in the lawsuit to be the well-known British accounting firm Dixon Wilson, as "an oasis of Britishness in Paris." She writes that employees frequently went for a "cuppa tea," and there was a portrait of the queen on the office wall.

Like many anonymous bloggers, Petite did not expect the real links to become public. Alas, when your private thoughts are opened to potentially millions of readers, someone may make the connection. And if it is your boss — ouch!

Now back to our little Brit, Petite Anglaise. The book and blog have been compared to "Bridget Jones" and "Sex and the City," and there are similarities.

For example, Petite tells us about the undoing of her relationship with Mr. Frog. In the comments box of her blog, she meets an Englishman, James, living in Rennes. Petite decides to meet James one weekend while he is Paris; he is a fellow blogger who is divorced with two daughters. The romance takes off from there …

Petite and James meet up whenever he is in Paris, and Petite takes "sick days" from work (now you can see the little employment problem!).

In the blog, which Petite is still writing, the romance seemed almost too perfect and then it suddenly ends. In the book, we see what Petite was going through: "Not a single image of us together. As an entity, a couple, it suddenly seemed as though we had only ever truly existed on the page." Sanderson communicates with us differently in the blog and book.

The blog is interactive — she meets James in her comments box — and we see everything in the moment. Petite is in love with James, irrational but happy, which was not the case with Mr. Frog. In the book Sanderson steps back to analyze the situation, referring to herself as an "open book."

She connects the two when she explains in the book that blogging was vital to her: "I could write myself back to health, I realized, finding solace in 'Petite Anglaise' as I always had."

The book is reflective and gives a more complete picture of Sanderson, how she never knows what the reader thinks or feels, or even who the reader is. The book shows how hurt Petite is when both relationships end, especially with James, a man she considered uprooting her and Tadpole’s life for. She realizes how silly this was, and we see that she still cares for Mr. Frog and would like to get back together with him, but eventually realizes that she should not.

Both the book and blog are fascinating. The blog is a fun read precisely because it is honest and in the moment. I usually hate blogs because I feel no need to know the personal details of a stranger’s life. Yet the book sucked me in, and the blog provides an update on real characters that I developed an interest in — the charm of Tadpole correcting her mother's French, Petite's new husband, or their new apartment.

Any fan of the blog should read the book to get a better sense of Catherine Sanderson. You'll see why she does the things she does, which from reading the blog you really wonder about!

I also recommend the book to all bloggers, even if this isn’t your genre. Catherine Sanderson can teach a lesson to us all: Be careful what you put online! What Sanderson thought was a simple diversion, which would be seen by only a few people, was read by thousands, including her (former) employers.

"Petite Anglaise" the book is a great light read, and if you want, it can become more for those of you who are like me and hate it when a book ends.