I Am Finally, Finally French,
My Accidental Life in Brittany
A hilarious and heartfelt memoir of embracing life in rural France.

At 47, Mark Greenside, a glass-is-half-empty native New Yorker living in California, unwillingly went to Brittany, and to his great amazement and surprise fell in love with the place and its people. Then, because love makes you crazy and do crazy things, he borrowed money from his mom and bought a 120‑year‑old farmhouse in Plobien, a village of 500 people. Thus began Mark’s bumbling, hilarious journey adapting to life in rural France. From navigating unwritten rules about touching tomatoes at the market to hosting dinners for discerning friends, every mishap and cultural and linguistic misunderstanding—of which there were many—became a lesson in resilience, perseverance, compliance, and humility.

Now, three decades later, Mark reflects on the unforeseen joys and challenges of growing older in the place he calls home every summer. With his trademark wit and self‑awareness, he reveals how his life in Plobien—and his friends’ and neighbors’ enduring patience and kindness—have shaped him into something he never thought he’d become: truly, deeply, finally French.

Both a love letter to Brittany and a meditation on life’s unpredictability, I Am Finally, Finally French is an invitation to laugh, learn, and savor the beauty of embracing change—no matter how daunting it seems…

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First born Jewish son after the Holocaust, that story.

First generation American, that story, too.

From city to suburbs, Brooklyn to Long Island, near poor to near rich, then rocketing downward mobility. From organized labor (sewing trades on mother's side, restaurant trade on father's), to teacher (mom) and lawyer (dad), to marginalized labor again: part-time teacher until age 40 (no benefits, no retirement, no money), then full-time, tenured teacher, and marginalized writer of fiction.

Union leader, officer, worker, activist in American Federation of Teachers for forty years, until I retired.

Civil Rights: marched, picketed, arrested; present at the 'I Have a Dream' speech, Thanksgiving dinner with John Lewis in Atlanta, and Bo Diddly at the Apollo Theater.

Anti-Vietnam War: marched, picketed, arrested; present at numerous marches on Washington where I once threw a garbage can through a window at the State Department, proving that even then I understood and appreciated the power of imagery and metaphor.

Anti-draft and anti-draft counseling and resistance.

Taught history and political science at A & T, a HBC (Historic Black College) in North Carolina for two years…read full bio