Not Quite Nice
By Celia Imrie (Bloomsbury)
I really like the actress Celia Imrie, one of the stars of the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel movies. So I wanted to like her debut novel, but I struggled at times. Imrie is strong on dialogue and this story of expats living in the South of France bubbles with fun but it was difficult to look away from the flaws. The prose has a tendency to run along well-worn lines. In the first line the sea sparkles like a diamond and there's a bizarre amount of repetition with several characters saddled with selfish, awful children and an implausible number of people who aren't what they seem. Plus the plot becomes increasingly bonkers. When Theresa is pushed into early retirement she moves to a small town on the Mediterranean near Nice. As she experiences the ups and downs of creating a new life she befriends the locals, some of whom turn out to be up to no good. Theresa ends up holding cooking classes to make some cash so there are a few simple French recipes dotted through the story and they may be among the best things about it. I still like Celia Imrie. I think her novel is mildly amusing nonsense.
The Strange Library
By Haruki Murakami (Harvill Secker)
I kept breaking off from reading this book to sniff its pages. They smelled amazing (try that with a Kindle). Japanese writer Murakami's short, creepy tale is held within the most gorgeous volume. Its front cover has a little library pocket stuck to it and inside it's illustrated with materials from London Library's collections. The story is about a boy who pops into the library after school to find a book on how taxes were collected in the Ottoman Empire. He is sent to the bowels of the building where an old man locks him in a reading room. There, he awaits a terrible fate as he crams facts from books into his brain and is brought amazing doughnuts by a sheep-man. Meanwhile, his mother will be worrying why he isn't home for dinner. Everything about this little novella is strange and beautiful. An eccentric, dark fairy tale for adults and older kids.
Recipes From My French Kitchen
By Allyson Gofton (Penguin Random House)
What I love about this cookbook is its realness. Kiwi cook Allyson Gofton's account of the year she and her family spent in France's Hautes-Pyrenees region isn't all frolics and frogs' legs. She is open about the isolation she felt arriving in Caixon at the start of winter with a language barrier and cultural differences to overcome plus the upsets and outbursts of two unsettled children. Even better, instead of endless shots of a glammed-up Gofton drifting about serenely with herbs in her hands, we get her own snaps showing her makeup-free and shiny-faced as she meets locals and investigates their cuisine. The recipes are very much rustic French fare and move through the seasons. There's lots of duck confit and hearty meat dishes; for autumn I'm intrigued by a roast chicken with a stuffing of pork mince, chestnuts and crumbled Pain d'Epice (a honey and spice loaf). This is far more than just a food book, and anyone who has dreamed of decamping with the family to live overseas for a while will find it honest and inspiring.
