Not Quite Nice

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Shelve this book under "middle-aged woman rediscovers zest in her life" and "English people misbehaving abroad". This is light-hearted escapism, starting when Theresa, on a whim, buys a house in a lovely seaside town on the Riviera. The small community of English-speaking expatriates, embraces the new arrival, and soon Theresa is enjoying her new life. But it's not all baguettes and vin blanc , and drug dealers, con men and corporate spies soon appear on the scene. Their ‘friends’ include an obligatory gay couple, a stylish American couple, an older botoxed-to-the-hilt loudmouth drunk, the mousy nondescript newbie, a corporate highflyer (whose first scene involving her slapping Theresa like some sort of trashy Dr Phil guest is too ridiculous for words) and her philandering poet of a husband. I’m so sad (mad?) that the only reason this was published was because it was written by a well known actress. Surely no publisher would have snapped up this mess on its own merits. BelleVu Sur Mer was just outside Nice and had a thriving ex pat community. The story centred mainly around Theresa who emigrated to France after being forced into early retirement. Sally a children's TV presenter who found herself typecast and never worked again. Glamorous Carol who made Theresa feel welcome and her husband David. Business woman Sian and her adulterous Australian husband Ted. This is an awful thing to say and I’ll probably get into trouble for it, but I slightly shy away when I hear an English voice in Nice. I want to stay in my little bubble of French life. So no, I don’t really know English people out here at all, which is how I like it.

Not Quite Nice: : Celia Imrie: Bloomsbury Publishing

What an enjoyable way to spend a weekend afternoon by escaping to the Cote D'Azur, and to the charming town of Bellevue-sur-Mer, and its delightful array of residents. The initial descriptions of the town, conjured up pictures of a pretty town in Southern France, and I had the feeling the whole time that it felt like a similar sort of place to the one in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. And in fact that feeling didn't leave me during the book, and there was a similar storyline to the film, running through part of the book, which made me both smile and gasp.Theresa is desperate for a change. Forced into early retirement and fed up with babysitting her bossy daughter's obnoxious children, she sells her house and moves to the picture-perfect town of Bellevue-sur-Mer, just outside Nice.

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And there is Brian, who is there when Theresa is mugged on one of her first days in France, and helps her out and becomes her lodger. Brain also helps out, when Theresa starts running cooking classes for the ex-pats to gain an income. There are recipes dotted about between some of the chapters, mainly for Nicoise delicacies, which are always great to see, although as someone who doesn't cook, I can't really test them out or comment further on them. I’m terribly slow, actually, but at the moment I’m reading a book by Colette, My Apprenticeships and Music Hall Sidelights, I suppose because it’s got a theatrical thing going on. I like short stories – Patricia Highsmith’s The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder is a favourite. I enjoyed this book, and sailed through it in one read! Lots of interesting descriptions….took you to the Riviera in your dreams. Poor Theresa, so loving of her ungrateful, grabbing miserable family. Good for her making an ‘escape’. She did remain a loving mum however, always there for them and accepting when her silly daughter turned up on her doorstep. I loved the silliness and dotty characters… I enjoyed the narration, even if there were some over the top voices and that the middle aged, male Australian poet accent and vocabulary was incredibly off mark, hideous and cringeworthy as it appeared to be styled on my brother when hanging out with his bogan mates.Vera in the BBC adaptation of A Dark Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell). She came to the set once, and talked to us about the plot. I told her I thought it was just fabulous. She said – she’s quite frightening, actually – she said very often a story centres on people wondering who a character’s father is but she thought, what if we don’t know who the mother is? It seemed such a simple twist but, my God – it was quite marvellous. That sort of fantastically tapestried story is what I’m trying to write now for book two, trying being the operative word.

Quiet or quite ? - Grammar - Cambridge Dictionary Quiet or quite ? - Grammar - Cambridge Dictionary

One thing many of the characters have in common is their children are horrid. And I mean horrid. I can’t quite fathom that a/ children would treat their parents like they do in this book or b/ anyone would let their children treat them like they do in this book. I’m sorry, it’s unbelievable. Okay, so there might be people out there with awful children but I would assume they were horrible parents in the first place. These middle aged horrors seem to have all been hatched from hell with no help from their mother or father. One bad apple might be understandable but for these characters to *all* have such demon children is weird. As Theresa settles to the gentle rhythm of seaside life she embraces her new-found friendships and freedom. However, life is never quite as simple as it seems and as skeletons start to fall out of several closets, Theresa begins to wonder if life on the French Riviera is quite as nice as it first appeared… I really enjoyed this light fluffy read – and can relate to feeling used and abused by a demanding selfish grown-up child who thinks that everything hubby and I worked hard for has to be handed to her on a platter. Sixty-year-old Theresa has one such child and when she is laid off from her job the thought of being an unpaid navvy for her daughter for her remaining years fills her with horror. So on impulse she buys a small house in the fictional town of Bellevue-sur-Mer just outside Nice in the south of France. So Theresa now lives not quite in the city of Nice and events that occur are not quite nice either – so I really appreciated the very clever title punning on the two meanings of ‘nice’.. In her debut novel, Imrie has given us a sort of “coming of old age” story. I loved Theresa, though I wanted to shake her a few times when she put up with bad treatment by her ungrateful, selfish daughter and her bratty grandchildren. Still, this is a woman who has always done her best and who is slowly but surely realizing that she deserves some pleasure in life. The cast of supporting characters was marvelous as well: the smooth and attentive Brian; Sally a former British TV star; Americans Carol and David; “dragon lady” Sian and her philandering Aussie husband Ted; the witty, seemingly never aging octogenarian Zoe; compliant Faith and her pushy son Alfie who insists she needs a mansion rather than the small flat she’d prefer; and gay couple Benjamin and William. In this delightful story, Imrie gives the reader a cast of (mostly) charming characters: a widowed ex-actress, a pair of gay men, a narcissistic elderly woman with a flair for cutting remarks, an apparently loving American couple, an Australian lothario and his jealous wife, a timid mother and her bullying son, an ex-prisoner, a self-centred daughter and her three spoiled children, a long-absent hippy son, an over-achieving daughter and a mysterious woman who claims to be recuperating.

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Celia Imrie’s light and amusing style subsequently transports the reader to the glorious setting of the French Mediterranean Coast where Theresa relocates. The town of Bellevue-Sur-Mer seems to offer no end of culinary delights and new found friendships, all centred on a very eccentric and somewhat insular set of expats. I can't say this was particularly well written - it seems that towards the end, the author just wanted to get this book done and get all the stories wrapped up, which led to some really implausible and far-fetched revelations. The characters, especially the children of two of the female characters, were caricatures of entitlement and nastiness. And there were a lot of characters! However, as Theresa begins to acclimatise to her new, independent life she soon discovers that you should be very careful what you wish for. Things may look greener on the other side of the Channel, but Nice and its inhabitants are not quite as nice as she first thought. We feel that Celia may have ‘borrowed’ the beginning of the book from ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ as her character in that goes to India to escape her demanding and ungrateful family.

Celia Imrie: food is one of the great joys of life Celia Imrie: food is one of the great joys of life

Imogen, Therese's daughter, reminded me so much of Shirley Valentine's daughter, with her attitude towards her mother. She seems more worried about how the move will leave her babysitter less, than her mother's happiness. This is Celia Imrie’s first fictional book – and she has done very well by allowing humour to take over the story at times without it descending into silliness. The lightness balances nicely with the more drama ridden topics of infidelity, sex-changes, homosexuality, drug use and criminal activity. I was often laughing out loud at some of the events – gasping at some more meatier ones and then getting angry at the behaviour of a plethora of offspring that come to get what they can out of their various parents – or think they have the right to be rude to a parent who stands firm against them. The overall message is – it is your life, your needs and your choice. Do not let your children emotionally bully you. Learn to say no when it doesn’t suit you to do what they want. Theresa has lost her job and on impulse decides to "retire" to Southern France. She finds a lovely flat with a view of the harbor in Bellevue-Sur-Mer, a small village near Nice, where she meets a group of ex-pats, mostly British, who befriend her. But not all is perfect in paradise. A series of burglaries and a couple of vicious muggings have people on edge. Not to mention the family difficulties each of them has - cheating spouses, ungrateful children, dwindling funds, alcoholism, etc. The main plot of the book is not these parents sorting out their middle aged evil spawn, or them finding some sweet romance, or them having any sort of life affirming epiphanies. No, it’s them being victims of a conman thief. The conman’s identity isn’t even made a secret, so the only mystery you have to solve is why these grown ass women are so naive and pathetic. I really enjoyed this book about the over sixties and seventies inhabitants of Bellevu Sur Mere. Although this was a light hearted read Celia managed to weave some dark threads in the tale. Including a con man, muggings, burglaries and card cloning. There was also one big storyline I definitely did not see coming.

A light easy to read mix of farce. A rough guide to France and some recipes for good measure. (the recipe format reminds me of Recipes for a Perfect Marriage by Karen Kerrigan). This book was enjoyable, but I would have preferred a more factual approach like Peter Mayle. Marjorie J.