Book Review: A Wedding in Provence: A Novel by Ellen Sussman

A Wedding in Provence: A Novel by Ellen Sussman

Published by: Ballantine Books

Published on: July 15, 2014

Page Count: 288

Genre: Fiction

My Reading Format: ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley

Available Formats: Kindle ebook and hardcover

My Review: 

Have you ever been a part of a wedding (your own or a family member or close friend's), and in the days leading up to the big event, tensions and relationship drama and past issues all begin to surface, layers peeling away like an onion? We all have. Weddings bring out the best and worst in people. All that togetherness can really make things interesting.

That's the case in A Wedding in Provence for the soon-to-be wed couple Brody and Olivia. They've arrived in the French countryside a few days before their ceremony, to be held at the inn owned and operated by Olivia's best friend Emily and her husband Sebastian. As the other wedding guests arrive, we learn about their relationships with one another and their past and present lives. There's Brody's womanizing best friend Jake, Olivia's two adult daughters Nell and Carly, Brody's mother Fanny and Nell's date Gavin who all bring their (literal and figurative) baggage with them for the weekend. Also present are the shadows of others who aren't attending the wedding: Nell's recently deceased boyfriend Chaney, Nell and Carly's father, Carly's workaholic boyfriend Wes, Brody's father and widower Brody's first wife and first love.

The relationships are complicated and still in progress in many cases. Olivia wants to relax as the bride-to-be but is mothering her two troubled daughters, both of whom are working through issues from their lives back home and undergoing a period of self-discovery. Their father is still a part of their lives (as much as he can be), and Nell and Carly are unsure about letting their mother's new husband into their lives. Nell still struggles with her boyfriend's suicide months before, and is still making the rash decisions she has made her whole life, such as bringing her seat mate from her flight with her to the wedding. Gavin seems like fun at first but is sketchy, not surprisingly bailing on Nell as soon as he gets the chance. Carly, the put-together, predictable sister, is rethinking her boring life with a boring boyfriend and let loose a little. Brody is navigating his parents' failed marriage, and father's sickness and absence from the wedding. Even innkeepers Emily and Sebastian have hit a rough patch in their marriage.

Overall, this book is a fun read. I would have loved to see this French town on the Mediterranean, and its fabulous wine and food take more of a central role in the book. At times I found the characters and their sex lives to be tiring. But, the characters are complex and were enjoyable. At the end of the book Olivia is the beautiful bride and Brody the happy groom, and they are married surrounded by their favorite friends and relatives. The book ends but not neatly, which is, I think, just like real life, which has many of the same themes this book has: second chances, making up for lost time, healing, forgiveness and love.

Three and a half stars out of five

If you liked this book, you’ll like French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France by Richard Goodman and Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes (for an American take on visiting the European countryside), and Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin and Once Upon a Time There Was You by Elizabeth Berg (for stories about weddings).

Book Review: The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

The Awakening of Miss Prim by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

Published by: Atria Books

Published on: July 8, 2014

Page Count: 272 pages

Genre: Fiction

My Reading Format: ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley

Available Formats: Paperback and Kindle e-book

My Review: 

Can you think of a fictional character who is so uptight you read about them wishing they would just lighten up, making their own life and the lives of the character around them easier? A few such characters come to mind for me like that:  Aunt Cordelia in Up a Road Slowly, Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music and Mrs. Gulch in The Wizard of Oz. But I can't think of any uptight character I liked so much right away as I do Miss Prudencia Prim. The epitome of a Type A personality, the heroine in The Awakening of Miss Prim is punctual, dependable, disapproving, rigid and not much fun. She's seeking new scenery and a change in her life. Though overqualified for the position, she applies for a job with and is hired by a man to organize his in-home library, and moves to San Ireneo de Arnois, a small village in France, for several months to complete the job. This self-proclaimed "mistress of the art of delicacy" is ready to jump in with both feet and get her boss, the Man in the Wingchair, all squared away.

Prudencia believed herself to be capable and completely in control of the life she'd chosen for herself (one that includes no wiggle room). However, as Prudencia spends more time in San Ireneo de Arnois, she begins making friends with the children in the household and the townspeople. Many of those friends are women who have ideas about what constitutes a full and complete life for a woman, which at first differ from Prudencia's ideas on the subject. First off, every woman should be married (Prudencia disagrees of course, as she's got her life just how she wants it). Also, every woman should be given time to discover herself (Prudencia believes she already has), and villager Eugenia believes this should happen in Italy.

Things don't go as Prudencia plans. The exasperation she feels toward the Man in the Wingchair not surprisingly softens. She discovers her female friends know some secrets to life that she's previously missed. She is accepted by and learns from the experiences of her boss' mother, with whom she forms a close friendship.

I would have liked to know more about Prudencia's background and would have loved to see more development in her relationship with the children in the household. When she travels to Italy, we know she's become more self-aware by the end of the trip, but it's a transition we sense more than see the details of. Those things are small though in relation to how much I enjoyed the story.  

Yes, I felt pretty sure I knew what was coming but that didn't take anything away from my enjoyment. It echoes of Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Little Women, three of my favorite books. In short, I had fun reading this book, and I think you will too.

Four and a half out of five stars

If you liked this book, you’ll like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and Little Women, of course.

Recent Reads: Half the Sky and A Call to Action

I recently listened to Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It was tough, a very difficult book to listen to. Even though I knew I should stick with it, I almost had to stop it was so upsetting. Somehow, hearing about the dangerous, exploited lives of women around the world was harder to hear for me than if I'd read a physical copy of the book. On into the book there are some success stories that are really powerful, and that's what helped me get through it. I had reached more than my fill of frustratingly sad stories of women so limited by their circumstances and so abused and manipulated by men (both strangers and family members), stories that had no easy solutions. I even had to stop listening about one-third of the way in. I asked a friend I knew had read the book previously if she, knowing me well, thought I should continue the book. She encouraged me to, and I'm glad I finished it. It was perhaps THE most difficult book I've ever read.

I followed that up shortly thereafter with Jimmy Carter's latest book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power. In part, the same idea from Half the Sky is here, but with a little bit different spin. For one, Carter covers the injustices to women done both in the United States and  other parts of the world, which made the book feel more personal to me. And, Carter gave more solutions and success stories, which kept me from getting that completely hopeless feeling I got from Half the Sky. 

(Disclaimer: I do realize to affect change people have to be made uncomfortable.)

Have you read either of these books? What did you think? 

**A few years back I traveled to Plains, Georgia, to attend Jimmy Carter's Sunday school class, a great experience.

Recent Read: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

Have you ever decided what you think will happen in a book based on the title, front cover or the first few chapters, then left confused when that doesn't happen? I recently listened to The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe). While I enjoyed the book overall, the title just simply doesn't measure up to the storyline of the book.

The book takes place in two different times and places that come together later in the book. Sookie is a 60-year-old woman living in Alabama who discovers that she was adopted, a fact that her nonagenarian mother (still living) never revealed to her. Fritzi is a young woman in Pulaski, Wisconsin, working with her family at a filling station when the United States enters World War II. As Sookie begins researching her past, she puts previously unknown pieces of her history together, which fits in with the Jurdabralinski sisters.

I had in my head early in the book that with "Reunion" in the title, Sookie would discover not that she had been adopted, but that her mother had worked at at all-girl filling station during World War II when some women were placed in men's roles while they were overseas. I had in mind that Sookie's mother Lenore would be invited to a reunion of all the women who worked at this filling station. Sookie, whose relationship with her mother wasn't an easy one, would have traveled with her mother to this reunion. All this extra time together would have helped them talk through some things from their past, and come away from the trip with a greater understanding of each other and a stronger mother-daughter relationship. I had also imagined that Sookie would have really enjoyed meeting all the women who knew her mother decades before and hearing those women tell stories about her mother that she'd never heard.

As the book went on and my first ideas didn't line up with the plot, I formulated a new plan: as Sookie learned of her birth family and their business, she would become interested in meeting her mother and aunts who had run the filling station during the war. "Reunion" would mean that Sookie would travel to Wisconsin to meet them all, and this would be her first meeting of her birth family.

Neither one of these theories panned out, and I won't go into detail in case it spoils the book for the rest of you. I will say, though, that while I enjoyed a fun story with some historical base, the book needs a better, truer title. The title just doesn't measure up with what the book is really about.