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.
