POPULAR FICTION
THAT PART WAS TRUE
FASTIDIOUS divorcee Eve isn’t the fan letter-writing sort. But she does love food. Jackson Cooper, a Lee Child- esque American author, gets fan mail by the truckload. But not usually from upmarket English ladies praising his descriptions of peaches.
A correspondence, increasingly intimate, ensues and eventually Jackson suggests meeting in the city of lovers and food.
Will Eve come to Paris? Both are managing relationships: Jackson with hilariously uptight, gastrophobic Adrienne, and Eve with her difficult daughter Izzy. Can they move on until problems and people have been faced? A delicate romance, beautifully achieved.
AU RESERVOIR
THE craze for writers to ‘refresh’ the literary past (Trollope on Austen, etc) continues with the final part of this Thirties set trilogy exhuming deadly social rivals Mapp and Lucia.
I love the E. F. Benson originals, though prefer the Riseholme novels to those set, like this, in the seaside town of Tilling.
But Fraser-Sampson’s parody is excellent, especially the introduction of Noel Coward and John Gielgud to crank up the already considerable period camp to levels of nearhysteria. Forbidden sexual longing abounds: Quaint Irene the butch painter with her crush on Lucia; Olga the star soprano with her pash on Lucia’s husband; Major Flint after everything in a skirt.
But the main drama is the grandes dames plotting to thwart each other. Mapp and Lucia are ghastlier than ever, which makes the end surprisingly and powerfully touching.
CAMPARI FOR BREAKFAST
IT’S 1986. Sue Bowl, 17, is a sort of upmarket Adrian Mole, though in a decrepit Surrey mansion r ather t han t he council estates of Leicester.
But she has Adrian’s authorial ambitions and romantic inclinations and, like him, is an innocent in an often tragic world.
Sue’s mother has committed suicide; she’s trying to understand it while falling in love with Icarus, who works in the local greasy spoon.
But Icarus only has eyes for Machiavellian beauty Loudolle. His good-egg brother Joe loves Sue, though, and she’s additionally shored up by her eccentric aunt Coral, some retired admirals and a trio of old ladies obsessed with the Duke of Edinburgh.
This debut novel by actress Sara Crowe is, like its teenage heroine, a wonderful oddity, full of poignancy, humour and shafts of startling perception.