Leaving his uninterested wife, Paul Peachy joins the armed services and is soon deployed to France during World War I.  When his camp is decimated by the Germans, he finds himself at the wrong end of a number of rifles, but some quick thinking and a fluency in the German language serve to buy him some time.

He assumes the identity of an infamous German spy, Harry Stroller, and is not only accepted into the German camp, but is eagerly welcomed.  Indeed, his ‘host’ even introduces him to a lovely young French whore named Annie, who captures the unlikely hero’s heart.

But how long can Peachy maintain his subterfuge?  Surely it is just a matter of time before someone who knows the real Harry Stroller shows up…

I am going to come right out and say it – neither the story nor the title of this book much interested me, but when I saw it was written by Gene Wilder, my curiosity got the best of me and I simply had to buy MY FRENCH WHORE.  Once I began reading the story, I soon forgot who the author was, finding myself completely immersed in the story Mr. Wilder spins with apparent ease, as if he is relating the facts of something that actually occurred rather than delivering a vignette borne of his own imagination.

Gene Wilder shows a decided talent for stringing words together in such a way that the story plays in the readers’ minds like a movie or even a memory.

I stated previously that neither the story nor the title caught my attention, but I avow the story more than satisfied this reviewer.  An unusual piece, MY FRENCH WHORE is a kind of ‘day-in-the-life’ story that encompasses several days in the life of Paul Peachy and the adventures he lived in France during World War I, all the while finding in the most unexpected of places the woman who would forever hold his heart.