Last year I read
Nina George’s wonderful novel, The Little
Paris Bookshop, which was her first novel translated into English. She had written some 40 books, and was
considered an international sensation—except in the US where she was virtually
unknown. Now she has released her second
novel, The Little French Bistro. This novel is quite different from Bookshop, but I thoroughly enjoyed
it. I can’t wait for another.
Based on Paris Bookshop, I made several
assumptions which proved to be false.
First, Nina George is not French; she is German. I met her at a book reading in Book People in
Austin Texas recently and learned she was born in Germany and still lives there
with her husband. Bookshop was not her first novel, but rather somewhere in an oeuvre
of over 40 books. She proved to be
gracious and funny as she slipped back and forth among German, French, and
English. After the reading, she signed
my books, and hugged every reader who wanted one.
Marianne Messmann is
married to Lothar, a man with no sense of romance and a thoroughly unpleasant
personality. They have been married for
about forty years, and Marianne has reached a breaking point. George opens the novel with a chilling scene.
She writes, “It was the first decision
she had ever made on her own, the very first time she was able to determine the
course of her life. // Marianne decided to die.
Here and now, down below in the waters of the Seine, late on this grey
day. On her trip to Paris. […] The water
was cool, black and silky. The Seine
would carry her on a quiet bed of freedom to the sea. Tears ran down her cheeks; strings of salty
tears. Marianne was smiling and weeping
at the same time. Never before had she
felt so light, so free, so happy” (1). A
homeless man rescues her, and she is taken to a hospital to contact her
husband. She then dresses and escapes on
a train headed to a remote corner of northwestern France. All the while on this trip, she plans to
reattempt her suicide off the coast of Brittany.
A group of nuns give
her a ride to the little fishing village of Kerdruc. She meets a number of the residents, who
welcome her with open hearts. Each day
she resolves to jump into the sea, but she delays a day, then another, and another. She gets a job working at a bistro then
gradually she is absorbed into the community.
Marianne begins to devise an entirely new life for herself. Then Lothar shows up, and everything is
threatened. I won’t spoil the ending,
but it is worth following Marianne to one of three possible conclusions.
Marianne is an
empathetic woman. George writes, “She
took a deep breath, carefully picked up the crab and set it down on the
polished steel table. It scrambled
around a bit as she searched among the bottles on the sideboard before reaching
for the cider vinegar and pouring a few drops into the creature’s mouth. The clatter of its pincers on the steel
surface grew fainter before suddenly ceasing altogether. // ‘This may sound
odd, but you can kill humanely too,’ […] ‘Vinegar sends them to sleep, you
know.’ She cupped her hands to her
cheeks, cocked her head and closed her eyes, then lowered the crab into the
boiling water.’ ‘It’s bath time. See, it doesn’t hurt so much’” (85-86).
Nina George has
written a love story like few others in The
Little French Bistro. Kerdruc is a
mythical place like no others. I can
only hope another novel will soon appear by this talented, funny, and
interesting writer. 5 Stars.
--Chiron, 8/5/17
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