POPULAR FICTION
LESSONS IN FRENCH BY HILARY REYL (Harper £7.99)
An enjoyable rites-of-passage novel with a delicious Parisian twist. It’s 1989 and Yale graduate Katie comes to work in the City of Light. Her employer, Lydia, is a self-important celebrity photographer who has Umberto Eco and Henri Cartier-Bresson popping round for dinner.
Katie moves into Lydia’s posh apartment; also coming and going are Lydia’s pretentious academic Brit husband, slobby son Josh and skinny daughter Portia whose sexy slimeball boyfriend seduces Katie.
Best things about this book: occasional brilliantly satirical (I think) moments and the well-evoked atmosphere of Paris in the Eighties.
Not so good: a plot both over-complicated and strangely unsatisfying. Yet Reyl, whose debut this is, has clearly got great things in her.
SOMEONE ELSE’S WEDDING BY TAMAR COHEN (Doubleday £14.99)
More rites, more passages. Fortysomething Fran, yummy mummy to Pip and Katy and wife to the well-preserved Saul, has been asked to the wedding of close family friend Jamie.
There’s lots of caustically-observed comedy and telling details of middle-class metropolitan middle-youth life. But the most important detail at first remains elusive - what’s going on between Fran and the handsome Jamie, who’s young enough to be her son?
Even as he goes up the aisle, he sends her desperate texts; is this why Fran’s own marriage is in trouble? Fran’s a bit of a spiky heroine, but this is OK as her neuroses are part of the story. A comedy of modern wedding manners that’s also gripping, sexy and sad.
THE TRADER'S GIFT BY ANNA JACOBS (Hodder £19.99)
That rare thing, a pacy page-turner with a ripping plot and characters you care about. We’re rooting from the start for heroines Jacinta and Eleanor, recently widowed and in desperate circumstances.
They’re going to Australia to marry men they have never met, but will the new chaps be any better than the (horrible in both cases) old? And can Jacinta escape the evil relative intent on stealing her son - even following her on the steamship to do so! (It’s nailbiting, that bit).
I’d never read AJ before; she’s the 8th most borrowed author from UK libraries, and it’s easy to see why. Like Babs Taylor Bradford with the long bits taken out, she’s especially big on resourceful, admirable women. Great stuff!
