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The Matchmaker of Périgord |
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Friday, 12 October 2007 |
by Julia Stuart
Doubleday UK 2007: 314p,
hardcover.
Price €19 –
Your French News Price €17
It’s hard to believe that this
first novel, released a few
weeks ago in the UK, is set
in the same part of the world
as ‘A French Life’. Julia
Stuart’s France, spun from
happy memories of holidays
in the Périgord and a €100
meal at a restaurant locally
renowned for its truffle
menu, is a theme-park
version of Astérix’s Gaulois
village transported to the
Aquitaine and a present day
as outdated as berets,
communal washing
facilities and cassoulets
kept simmering for
three generations.
Amour-sur-Belle, the
imaginary village in
question, has the distinction
of being so draughty and
ugly that even the English
refuse to live there, leaving
the locals to carry on their
ancestral feuds en famille.
Because the alarming
increase of balding heads
among the ageing male
population of the village
threatens to put the barber
Guillaume Ladoucette out of
business, he decides to set
himself up as a matchmaker
instead. From a strictly
business standpoint this is a
somewhat dubious
proposition, given the
resentment and mutual
suspicion simmering (like
the famous cassoulet) among
the villagers, but Guillaume
is an idealist. Besides, he has
an unfinished affaire de coeur
of his own to settle with the
local châtelaine.
His ‘clients’ include a
colourful assortment of rural
eccentrics – a mushroom
poisoner, a midwife, a bar
owner and so forth – who do
not speak to each other
except to trade insults. There
are, in other words, as in all
classical love comedies,
plenty of obstacles to
overcome – and of course
they are overcome, after a
fashion. By the end of the
novel, thanks to the knotting
and unknotting of numerous
intrigues and a consumption
of vast amounts of fattening
food, Amour-sur-Belle merits
at least the first part of
its name.
If clichés could kill, ‘The
Matchmaker of Périgord’
would be a weapon of mass
destruction. But for those
who like their France served
à la sauce anglaise Julia
Stuart dishes out an amusing
enough entertainment for a
rainy afternoon.
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