An almost Australian Frenchman

March 12, 2005
Grundmann, left in Paris, laughs at the thought he is taking revenge for <i>Almost French</i>.

Grundmann, left in Paris, laughs at the thought he is taking revenge for Almost French.
Photo: James Clark

Sarah Turnbull's Almost French gave an Australian perspective on things Gallic. Pierre Grundmann's new novel puts the focus on us, writes James Clark.

Pierre Grundmann landed in Fremantle on the Eastern Queen from Singapore on the day Gough Whitlam was elected in 1972. He had been on the road in Africa and India for two years and his hair reached his waist. He and his French girlfriend had $10 between them.

The customs officials looked at their tourist visas, laughed and waved them through. There were no such things as backpackers then.

"We were all just hippies," says Grundmann, 55, the mane reduced to a greying hedge. "We were young and free and there was such a shortage of labour no one cared that we would go off and work."

Grundmann laboured on the building site of Alan Bond's America's Cup marina at Yanchep, carved tracks through the outback with a crew looking for oil, and toiled in Victorian factories.

Three years later, after Whitlam's dismissal, Grundmann returned to Paris with Sam Parsons, a petite blonde Australian, and a baby, Caleb. In 20 years, Grundmann rose to section editor of the left-wing daily Liberation and Parsons became almost French, although she slipped back to Melbourne for the birth of their second son, Joshua.

In 1996, they moved back to the easy life in a four-bedroom brick bungalow with a big backyard in the suburb of Hampton. Lorikeets chattered in gum trees. It was a 10-minute stroll to the edge of Port Phillip Bay.

This time, Grundmann kept his hands clean, writing about sailing, rugby, tennis and even cricket for Liberation. And he kept its readers informed of Australian attitudes to the Bali bombs, bushfires, gang rapes and boat people.

But after the rugby players went home, editors' interest in what happened at the bottom of the world waned.

Grundmann also had the feeling Down Under could no longer surprise him.

He returned to Paris in 2003 with a manuscript on his laptop's hard drive encapsulating some of what he loves and much of what he despises about the country that changed his life.

He had typed it in eight months in the breaks between sports assignments. "It was pure joy," he says.

Grundmann is sitting at a table in Cafe Franais, near the Bastille monument to France's revolutionary heroes, a refugee of sorts wearing scuffed Blundstones and the Varanasi scarf with which he sailed into Freo 32 years ago.

He laughs at the suggestion he has taken revenge for Almost French, Sarah Turnbull's memento about falling in love with a Frenchman and the trials of adapting to his country.

Sarah Turnbull's book tells of her life in Paris, while Pierre Grundmann's Surfeuses Paradise casts a critical eye over Australia.


French writers who have lived in a new country rarely write about their experiences. "Let's just say it's the arrogance of the French," he says.

"As a French writer you are supposed to be interested in the country itself, not how it affects you. I am an Australian citizen and I was interested in writing not as a Frenchman living in Australia, but as an Australian using the distance my French culture gives me."

Surfeuses Paradise, a fast-moving yarn, has been acclaimed by French critics as a kind of Thelma and Louise Down Under.

"Surfeuses Paradise is a ray of sunshine in our lifeless country," wrote another novelist, Frederic Beigbeder, in Voici magazine. "This novel is a stunning success that recounts total failure."

The book portrays two high-school girls, Danielle and Nina, driven to rebel against the hollowness of their lives in Nunawading. "Suburbia, they know, isn't a geographical space: it's an idea. An ideology. A perfect world, a way of life. Utopia realised. A better world. A destiny," Grundmann writes.

But these two are good girls who can do better than work at Bi-Lo in between binges on booze and drugs before they settle down in the mortgage belt. Their bold plans to save the planet, defenceless animals and their friend Pete the Greek take them careering through the continent's dark underbelly to fabled Surfers Paradise. It turns out to be anything but.

Grundmann says the novel lets off steam about what he dislikes about Australia and its suburbanised people - their conformism, complacency and what he calls the ethos of compulsory happiness.

"People look the same and think the same," he says. "A lot have this kind of stifling suburban life where you have to behave like everybody else. You have no other hope in life but to do what your parents and friends are doing. It's supposed to be a social paradise. But paradise is boring."

That isn't to say Grundmann's experiences of paradise were all negative. He says he was impressed by the sense of mateship and egalitarianism of his early years as an itinerant immigrant labourer.

It may be gallantry derived from his land of birth, but he declares Australian women to be very, very beautiful. And he cherishes the lack of pretension, the sense of humour, the powerful aridity of the landscape, its dusty heart.

"Australia is an exciting country for the French," he says. "It's America without the hassles: a young country, the space, a pioneering spirit, friendly people. If you've got a good idea you can have a go."

Australia might have given Grundmann a good idea for his first novel, but it wasn't enough to keep him there. Paris is where he grew up and, when he is on the other side of the world, he misses the place. Sam, 46, and Caleb, 29, still live in Melbourne. Joshua, 25, has married a French woman and doles out coffee and sandwiches on France's TGV trains.

"Paris is still a glamorous city. There is the idea that this is where things are happening," Grundmann says. "As I tell my friends in Australia, Princess Diana died in Paris, she didn't die in Melbourne."

Surfeuses Paradise, by Pierre Grundmann, Hatchette Litteratures. Grundmann's publishers are negotiating for an English translation of the novel.


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