Paris Imperfect - Susie Vereker

I very much enjoyed Susie Vereker's previous two novels, so was delighted when she sent me a copy of Paris Imperfect and I sat down last weekend, one of those dark afternoons when curling up on the sofa with a book is a really good idea with every anticipation of enjoyment.

As with An Old Fashioned Arrangement and  Pond Lane and Paris  and, as you can obviously guess from the book jacket, this story is once more set in this city.  Susie has spent most of her life in other parts of the world, first as an army officer's daughter and then as a diplomat's wife.  I was an army child and loved living in different places and found it all exciting and interesting and it is amazing how attached one can get to a country and a place which stays with you all your life.  I feel that Paris must be one of those places as far as Susie is concerned but I daresay she will correct me if I am wrong...

Twice divorced Clio lives In Paris with her lover Philippe, a handsome, cultured Frenchman who is very critical and keeps trying to 'improve' her.  Having experience of such a relationship myself I bristled   with indignation when he said that her stomach was not flat enough,  her hair was too curly (Parisiennes have smooth hair), but is glad she is taller than the average French woman because otherwise her excess flesh would be 'insupportable' if it were not spread out on a longer frame.  By this stage I am wondering why she is still with this twit and then when he insists she attends Weight Watchers I started thinking Come on Girl BIN HIM, but of course life is not that simple. Clio has a son and really feels she needs to make this relationship work after her previous failures. As her mother tells her 'beggars can't be choosers'.  My mother, still a lovely looking woman at 96, tends to snort and tell me 'Men! I wouldn't give one house room' and very supportive of my now single state for which I am enormously grateful.

Clio is honest enough to admit, like Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy and Pemberley, that perhaps she fell in love with Phillipe when she saw his apartment on the sixteenth arrondissment (gosh doesn't that sound better that a flat on the Hackney Road...no need to answer that) which is chic and dramatic.  So working on the premise that any relationship is better than none, she tries to make it work and, as Philippe feels she ought to contribute to the housekeeping (this man is a merde) she writes travel articles and also works as a tour guide, taking a variety of cients around northern France.  It is on a trip to the world war battlefields that she meets Joe, a gorgeous hunk from Canada and the attraction is instant and immediate.

Now, within one chapter of meeting him I am shrieking at her to dump Philippe who is obviously up to no good with another woman, who has a ghastly family and a mother that turn their noses up at Clio, but we all know it is easier said than done to end a relationship and start another so Clio's indecision and worry is understandable.

Of course, in the end all works out but not before misunderstandings and deceit, lies and heartbreak have to be worked through.  I did enjoy this book and read it straight through, but I have one bone to pick with the author and it is this. 

We have a wonderfully drawn character in Paris Imperfect, Clio's boss who runs the travel agency and who is a'tall Amazonian bottle blond of mixed European ancestry' and who Clio calls Miss Piggy.  'Despite her age and her porcine figure, she dresses in leather and flutters her long false eyelashes like a drag queen'

Sounds ghastly doesn't she?

And her name?...........Elaine

Comments

[Jan Jones]

There. there, Elaine, I'm sure it was nothing personal. And you are right that Susie catches Paris beautifully!

[Susie Vereker]

Delighted you enjoyed it! Thanks so much for saying so. Very sorry about choosing wrong name for Miss Piggy. If there is another edition, it must be corrected. As you suggest, my next heroine should be called Elaine, a still-beautiful mature blonde who lives in East Anglia and writes about books and opera.
By the way, An Old-Fashioned Arrangement was set in Geneva and in the next book I am moving to the tropics with any luck. Oh dammit, I forgot to write in a still-beautiful E.Anglian blonde. Never mind, next time.

[Elaine Simpson-Long]

Susie- of course an Old Fashioned Arrangment was in Geneva, sorry I got muddled. And thank you for the lovely compliment!!