Locate me
Bobbi French was born and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. She was a practicing psychiatrist working with children and adolescents until she ran away to France with her husband.
Her new book, Finding Me In France (Creative Book Publishing, 2012), chronicles her awkward, a perplexing, yet always entertaining journey of discovery and an experience of a lifetime living abroad. Bobbie also blogs about her big French adventure at www.findingmeinfrance.com.
What do you consider your best quality?
Compassion.
A quality you desire in a partner:
Above average cooking ability.
What do you appreciate most about your friends?
Unconditional support and enthusiastic cheer-leading.
Your worst quality:
Impatience.
Your favourite occupation:
Reading. Listening to music is a close second.
What is your idea of happiness?
Living a life on my own terms and answering only to myself, big things like that, but also small, everyday things—the day I know for sure that spring has arrived, starting a book and being hooked by the end of the first page, a warm cookie, all the lovely minutiae life has to offer.
Your idea of misery:
Living in a country engaged in or ravaged by war or living under an oppressive regime and, of course, having anything waxed.
If you could be someone else for a day who would it be?
Anyone who can speak fluent French.
Where you would most like to live?
Everywhere
Favourite colour:
I tend to have favourite colour combinations like charcoal grey and apple green.
Favourite animal:
I like all animals but lately I’m loving elephants. I assume it’s due to the solidarity I now feel with grey, wrinkled creatures.
Your favourite poet(s):
Pablo Neruda and Dr. Seuss.
Favourite author(s):
Carol Shields, Edith Wharton, Lisa Moore, Mary Lawson, David Sedaris, Lawrence Hill, Rohinton Mistry, too many to count.
Your favourite fictional heroes:
Elizabeth Bennet, Flavia de Luce and probably Jason Bourne on account of his plethora of passports, linguistic prowess, navigational skills and all around awesomeness.
Your real life heroes:
The architects of feminism; people who risk everything for noble causes like peace, equality and social justice, Aung San Suu Kyi springs to mind; anyone coping with mental illness; my husband.
Your favourite food & drink:
My favourite food list is too long to print and my hatred for cooking is too difficult to describe without the use of profanity, so anything made by someone else. Drink: Meursault wine.
What is your greatest fear?
The loss of basic rights and freedoms. Also that platform stilettos will stay in style forever.
A natural talent you’d like to possess:
Songwriting and a functional sense of direction. I am perpetually lost.
How you want to die:
Fulfilled
Your present state of mind:
Open.
This article was originally published in the Spring 2012 issue of Atlantic Books Today
