I am a good library user. I do not mind spending months in the hold queue for a much-anticipated book by a favourite author. In fact, there is something rather satisfying and even exciting about a long wait, especially since you never know exactly when the book is going to become available. But when it does finally appear, I refuse to wait any longer to read it. After months of waiting, Katie Fforde’s newest book, A French Affair, arrived at my library branch last night. I started reading it early this morning (don’t you love waking up early in the summer, when it is bright and warm even at five o’clock?) and had it finished before breakfast.
I have a muddled relationship with Katie Fforde’s books. I adore a few of them –Flora’s Lot and Thyme Out are two of my very favourite comfort reads – and like most of the others, but some make such a minor impression that I forget about them completely. I am afraid A French Affair is destined to fall into that third category. It is not bad it just lacks the energy and sense of fun that usually make Fforde’s books such enjoyable escapes.
Gina Makepiece and her sister Sally have inherited their aunt’s small collection of antiques and her stall at the French House, the antiques centre in the Cotswolds where she used to sell the items. Neither woman knows anything about antiques – Sally is a stay-at-home mother and Gina is in PR – but it isn’t long before Gina is throwing herself fully into this new world, eager to learn and to help the French House (and its handsome but grumpy owner, Matthew) thrive.
I am used to Fforde’s flat male characters and Matthew remains predictably distant throughout the story, though he is a marked improvement on many of Fforde’s heroes. What I had not expected was how slow-moving the rest of the story was and how uninteresting I found Gina. Usually, Fforde’s heroines have a chaotic blend of family and business interests that keep them absorbed and active for the course of the novel. Here, that energy was missing and as a result the whole book fell a little flat for me.
I wasn’t precisely disappointed by this book but I had hoped, after Fforde’s excellent last novel (Recipe for Love), that she was back on form after a series of lacklustre recent efforts. Apparently not quite yet. A French Affair is still an interesting read for any Fforde fan but not one of her books that I’m eager to return to.
Thyme Out is one of my favorites, too!
Too bad this isn’t one of her best efforts; I do love Katie Fforde, though. The Rose Revived is probably my favorite of hers, but there’s so many I like it’s hard to choose just one.
I feel the same way about this author. The first I read was marvellous and the second so so and since my library time is so restricted I was annoyed at the waste of time!
Katie is an excellent novelist but I do think that her work now suffers because it is expected of her to write her books in a very particular way. Some might call this formulaic, but it is more to do with her readers’ expectations. They want the latest ‘Katie Fforde’ and although she is not writing about the same characters, as a novelist might do in a series, she always has a certain type of feisty heroine and always uses a setting which is currently a la mode. Furthermore, her publisher has expectations in order for the latest ‘Katie Fforde’ to be yet another bestseller, so he/she no doubt says to her, “Katie, more of the same, please!” as they assume that this is what her buying public wants, i.e. that they don’t want innovation, surprises, great literature, they simply want another ‘Katie Fforde’. Furthermore, having to deliver her manuscript once a year also puts tremendous pressure on her to invent yet another story, but one which really differs little from all the previous ones, So when we criticise her later novels as not being as good as the early ones, we must consisder the volume of work she has produced, and how hard it must be to write a novel every year, and one which must be instantly recognisable as a ‘Katie Fforde’ with all the constraints that must being to her creative writing.
Thanks for your review!
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