Hunting and Gathering by Anna Gavalda
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
How do you say chick lit in French? This charming novel by Anna Gavalda has all the characteristics we want in a love story, with a good bit of French sophistication superimposed. It’s translated from the French by Alison Anderson, and I mention that because it is so smoothly done it doesn’t feel translated.
When I finished reading the book I looked on Amazon to see if there might possibly be a sequel, though the book ends so well and pleasingly that a sequel isn’t really possible with the same characters. I wanted to spend more time with them. I wanted to know what happened to them next. In other words, they were much more three-dimensional than most characters in a book that can be classified as a romance.
The structure of the book is clever. The grandmother of an eccentric young aristocrat named Philibert has died and until the estate is settled he is assigned by his family to live in her 4,000 sq ft apartment on the Champs de Mars so that none of the squabbling cousins can take it over. He expects a letter from the lawyers any day saying things have been settled and he must move out.
Meanwhile he has a roommate, Franck, a chef with tremendous skill with food but not with people. His language is profane and his girlfriends are many and short-term. But he and Philibert get along well enough as they have worked out a system where they seldom see one another. But both are nervous about change, so when Philibert rescues a young woman, Camille, who has been living in a tiny garret in their building, things become unsettled.
A talented artist who dropped out of the Ecole de Beaux Arts to live with a man with half her own talent, Camille has drifted, living on the street for a time. She is now working for a professional cleaning company that vacuums and tidies office in the middle of the night. Her co-workers, though not important to the story, are interesting, especially a woman from Senegal with a personality as big as her person.
Camille and Franck don’t get along and Franck’s depression at having put his grandmother, who lives in Tours, in a nursing home and the stress of his spending every day off driving to and back and spending the day with her wear on all of them. When the grandmother moves into the apartment with them Camille and Philibert fall in love with her and for a time things go well. But their comfortable situation is not to last and some tough decisions have to be made.
For a short time in my youth I lived on the rue Bonaparte very near the Ecole de Beaux Arts and walked the streets mentioned in the book. Camille loves the view in all directions from the middle of the Pont des Arts, a footbridge across the Seine, the bridge I took whenever I went to the other bank of the river. It was a delight to share this and other bits of Paris with Camille.
While I was at Amazon.com searching in vain for a sequel I sent a copy of this book to my sister, who is a pastry chef, and who I know will love the many descriptions of a Parisian restaurant kitchen, the people who work there, and the cooking they do – always under tremendous pressure. Franck it turns out is a superb cook and is the kitchen’s saucier (no 3 man in an old-fashioned brigade-style kitchen, immediately under the chef and sous-chef.)
A couple of other comments: I can’t remember who told me about this author and this book, but I’m grateful. Thank you. I thought about buying a copy for my Kindle until I realized the Kindle version is $13.99 and the paperback version, with its beautiful cover (a tray of chalks) is $11.56. Do save $2.50 and get the trade paperback.
2011 No 69 Coming soon: Moneyball
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