Book No. 36 of 2021
Needed something light as a breather in between stretches of bleak/dark reads, so having enjoyed George’s The Little Paris Bookshop, I decided to give this a whirl. It succeeded in making me feel ready to dive back into heavy literary fare, but not necessarily for the reasons I expected.
The good: as with Bookshop, George shines when she’s setting evocative and sensory scenes, like the feel of a Breton village, the smell of the sea, and the aromas and tastes of fresh savory food. It’s the type of writing that takes you out of wherever you are and makes you wish you could be right there with the characters.
The not-so-good: this was not nearly as well written as Little Paris Bookshop, imho, and I found myself speeding through the expository passages and plot points and only enjoying the aforementioned evocative descriptions. The characters feel like caricatures and the whole thing is pretty cheesy; it felt like watching one of those lazily produced feel-good movies that are only really palatable on planes. While I appreciated the overarching message that women should not suffer and repress their own desires to serve men, the book sometimes tilted too far into cheery, self-help, Eat Pray Love territory.
The book’s redeeming quality is that it ends with sections written by the author offering an extensive overview of Brittany with very useful travel tips, as well as recipes for the dishes featured in the story. If I ever find myself headed to Brittany, I will buy/borrow this book for those sections alone.
Similar Reads
There were a lot of similarities to The Little Paris Bookshop by the same author.
I was also reminded of Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog which also features an older woman evaluating her life and embarking on a new chapter, but is better written imo.