A Good Life

An evocative, powerful love story about two adult sisters forced to reconcile their lives at their grandmother's seaside home in the Basque Country.

In A Good Life, French author Virginie Grimaldi delivers a sensitive, familial love story about the unrivaled, transformative bond of sisterhood. The novel is set in the beautiful Basque countryside, where the adult Delorme sisters, Emma and Agathe, are reunited after a five-year estrangement. The two were forced to come together to spend one last summer vacation at the home of their beloved--now deceased--grandmother Mima. The seaside dwelling, about to be sold, holds dear memories that have anchored the sisters throughout their lives, despite their differences.

 

During the week shared at Mima’s house for the last time, the Delorme sisters revisit bygone stories. Short, evocative chapters render slice-of-life remembrances that take readers through episodes that defined and shaped the women’s childhood and teenage years—and probe stories of family and other loves and losses sustained into adulthood. These enlightening scenes are contrasted against the women’s lives in the present. They come to discover how Mima and the “good times” they shared via her influence at the house every summer served to calm and steady them through the storms of life. The deep challenges that befall the family mark the women’s identities, personalities, and coping methods. Tensions build in the narrative as Emma and Agathe ultimately confront each other and tend to the wounds that drove them apart.

 

Grimaldi’s concise pros, translated by Hildegard Searle, is striking and vivid, painting a sympathetic portrait of the enduring bond of sisterhood. Readers will fall under the spell of a compassionately revealed story that blends poignancy and humor in depicting the transcendental nature of familial love and forgiveness.  

 

A Good Life by Virginie Grimaldi (Translated from the French by Hildegarde Searle)

Europa Editions, $28 hardcover, 288 pages, 9798889660248

Publishing Date: May 28, 2024

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (May 31, 2024), link HERE 

 

A longer-form review of this novel was also published at Shelf Awareness on March 26, 2024.  Link HERE to read the review in its original long-form.

The Little French Bistro

A small, lively town in France offers an unfulfilled, 60-year-old woman liberation and a chance for personal reinvention.

While vacationing in Paris with her demeaning ogre of a husband, unfulfilled and unhappy, 60-year-old Marianne Messmann from Celle, Germany, decides to end her life by taking a plunge into the River Seine. But when a stranger rescues Marianne, she sets off on a journey to find her true self--the woman she sadly left behind and lost when she married 41 years before.  

Marianne's second chance at life seems dictated by providence. This begins in the hospital, where she finds a glazed tile depicting a beautiful harbor and a dainty red boat, sails slack, named Marianne--"a magnificent scene in the tiny space." On the back is written Port de Kerdruc, Fin. Marianne takes this as a sign. She ditches her husband and sets her sights on Kerdruc, located miles away in the Finistère region, a place in western France that "bulged out into the Atlantic--Brittany."  

Kerdruc is all Marianne imagines and hopes for. She lands a job at a bistro where she's befriended by a host of locals--dynamic characters, artists and dreamers--who also carry challenges and burdens of loss, regret and a lack of love and fulfillment. Amid Marianne's liberation and self-discovery, she falls in love again. But when her contrite husband tracks her down, Marianne is faced with a difficult choice. Loyal bonds of community, the tug of romance, gentle humor and poignant revelations buoy Nina George's (The Little Paris Bookshop) beautifully written, French-infused story brightened with hope. 

The Little French Bistro: A Novel by Nina George

Crown, $26.00 Hardcover,  9780451495587, 320 pages

Publication Date: June 13, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE



NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 7, 2017), link HERE

A French Wedding

Close-knit college friends with a long, sordid past reunite in the French countryside to celebrate the 40th birthday of one of their own.

In Hannah Tunnicliffe's A French Wedding, a former Parisian restaurateur serves as private chef for six college friends--and their significant others--who gather in a small French coastal town to eat, drink and be merry. Their celebration marks the 40th birthday of Max Dresner, a party boy and rogue rock star who's reassessing his life.

Juliette is a workaholic French chef who faces the breakup of a meaningful romantic relationship and tries to manage Delphine, her Paris eatery. When Juliette chooses to give up ownership of the café and care for her parents, she fears her dreams are forever shattered. Hired by Max as a housekeeper, she tends to his guests. The group includes Nina and Lars, college sweethearts, and their 15-year-old daughter, Sophie; Rosie and her surgeon husband, Hugo, an outsider to the clique; Eddie, who used to date Rosie in college, and his current girlfriend, Beth, an American hairdresser, younger than Eddie and the rest; and Helen, a free spirit and avant-garde art gallery owner, to whom Max finally intends to propose marriage over the weekend. 

While throughout the reunion the guests savor Juliette's gourmet food and the wine flows, spirits ultimately sour. Add percolating secrets, old resentments and an unexpected illness, and it looks like Max's birthday party--and his sincere intent to profess publicly his love for Helen--may fall flat. 

Tunnicliffe's well-drawn characters are forced to reconcile the past and face up to emotional midlife struggles in this bittersweet story with a deeply satisfying conclusion.

 A French Wedding by Hannah Tunnicliffe

Doubleday, $26.95 Hardcover, 9780385541848, 320 pages

Publication Date: June 6, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 4, 2017), link HERE