Oh la la, but this is fun! Je Ne Sais Quoi is a patchwork memoir by an illustrator and cartoonist called Lucie Arnoux, who is French but lives in London. It hops about a bit: not quite fully formed, it has the feeling, at moments, of an animated photograph album (this is Arnoux’s first book). But it is very endearing, and I predict great things of its creator, who has a passionate heart and an abiding sense of how best to live life to its fullest. I should also say that it is extremely cheering (if slightly bewildering) to read a book by a young European who still adores Britain, and who seemingly plans on staying here come hell or high water.
Arnoux grew up in Marseille, that great city of bouillabaisse, Le Corbusier and sunshine, a start that may go some way to explaining why she finds British weather so inexplicably charming. She was, she tells us, often unhappy at school; a geek and a misfit, she found it hard to make friends. But contentment is about finding your place in the world. A school trip to London led not only to her infatuation with all things Anglo, but to a new sense of purpose: now she had to find a way to return. Back at home, and still only 14, she began an internship at Studio Gottferdom, the Provençal collective of cartoonists and comic book writers: a dogsbody job that led, three years later, to her first commission. For the next six years, the studio published her autobiographical stories in its monthly magazine, Lanfeust, no matter where she was in the world. She never missed a deadline.
Her confidence growing bit by bit, she finally moved to London to study illustration and animation at Kingston University London, and the place was – it still is – even better than she imagined. She loves the pubs and theatres, and the liberating anonymity its streets seem to afford young women in particular (there is a good deal less wolf-whistling and ogling than in Marseille). But life in such a vast and expensive place isn’t always easy, and its difficulties – its lonelinesses, in particular – give her effervescent book its substance. In the end, this is a story of single life.
I love the pages titled “Lucie’s Bad Dates”, a roll call of appalling blokes that includes the “one who smelled of saucisson” and a guy who has to meditate for half an hour when she tells him her journey to meet him was awful (“I can’t handle stress very well,” he says). Arnoux is so good at describing the pressures on 21st-century women. The idea that the perfect partner may be only one swipe away isn’t heartening, it’s exhausting, though older readers will laugh at her conviction that at 30 she is “officially a spinster”. And she draws both herself and her friends with such spirit, whether in jeans or a party dress (her style is vaguely reminiscent of early Alison Bechdel). All in all, I think Je Ne Sais Quoi is well named. It comes with a certain indescribable something. Like Parisian scent, or a freshly baked baguette, the something in question is ineffably cheering: pas chic, exactement, mais vraiment adorable.
Je Ne Sais Quoi by Lucie Arnoux is published by Jonathan Cape (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
