The Diary of an American Au Pair

A romantic comedy with a delightfully biting literary edge, it's the story of Melissa, a sharp eyed American abroad. Fired by her San Francisco ad agency, she cancels her wedding to Ted, the safest man I've ever met, and soon regrets her next impulsive move across the Atlantic, as au pair to a minorly aristocratic British family, with the mother from hell, an ineffectual, sweet natured father, and three children, one of them deaf. From freezing farmhouses and island castles in Scotland, to a faded house at a smart London address, Melissa observes the natives in their classic habitats, with their bizarre manners and unchanging habits like the Romans, whom they take after, the people of these islands have fixed axles their ingenuity and mean ways, their utterly disarming moments and surprisingly gorgeous, death defying food. she resists the effete charm of the British bourgeoisies but succombs to the lure of lemon shortbread, and the sexy appeal of a lean and hungry Englishman, a far cry from the solid but absent Ted.