France September 2017

PHOTOGRAPHS: COCO VAN OPPENS; UNIFRANCE; JEAN-MARC DEPREUX
Five minutes with...
JENNIFER BOHNET
The British author talks
about the inspiration
behind her new book Rosie’s
Little Café on the Riviera
(see review, right), living
in Brittany and her love
of France.
I decided to set my novel on
the French Riviera after
having spent 11 happy years
in Cannes. Besides, who
doesn’t like the south of
France? My husband was
a guardian for a large villa
down there and in our spare
time we would go off, often
by bike, and explore the area.
We have been in France
for 18 years and I think we
know it very well. A few
years ago, we swapped the
sunny south for Brittany, in
the hope of being able to pop
across to south Devon on the
ferry to see more of our
children and grandchildren.
Friends said that Brittany
would be wet, but in fact, we
have had some really hot
summers and the place is
lovely and quiet.
France is the
perfect place to set
my novels because
there is such a
wonderful laissezfaire
attitude to
life here. We
have forgotten
how to be
English and
won’t be hurrying
back to the UK.
I hope to set many
Mimosas (from 25 August) – French
director Oliver Laxe’s beautifully shot
allegorical tale concerns a sheikh whose
dying wish is to be buried with his loved
ones. So he begins a journey through the
deserts and mountains of Morocco in the
company of a couple of rogues.
more of my novels across
the Channel.
But if there was one place
in the whole of France that
reminded me of where I come
from it would have to be
Antibes. The Riviera town is
just like Dartmouth in Devon
in that it has a lovely marina.
I used to go often to
Antibes and it really did feel
like home.
Jennifer Bohnet was
speaking to Peter Stewart
We are
listening to...
Le Lac by French
singer-songwriter
Julien Doré. The
lyrics (on youtube.
com) focus on the
artist’s view that
being outdoors is
the perfect place
to fall in love.
BOOKS
CULTURE
Rosie’s Little Café
on the Riviera
Jennifer Bohnet, Harper
Collins, £7.99
Singleton Rosie Hewitt’s longstanding
dream of having her little
café on the sun-kissed French
Riviera is about to come true. But
just days before the launch,
handsome, award-winning French
chef Sebastian Groc opens
a restaurant next door. Worried that her new neighbour
might inadvertently cause her dreams to come crashing
down around her, Rosie decides to put up a fight and show
him that she is anything but a pushover. Full of evocative
description and laugh-out-loud moments, this book will
make you fall in love with the south of France and makes for
a great holiday read. ✮✮✮✮
Curiosities of Paris
Dominique Lesbros,
The Little Bookroom, £14.99
Most visitors to Paris walk down
even the most famous streets
without noticing the small details
that help to bring the past to life.
Dominique Lesbros, a journalist and
author of many books on Paris, aims to put that right in this
idiosyncratic guide to the unsung relics (he calls them
‘mongrels’) that survive from pavement level to the
rooftops. Organised by subject and with 800 photographs,
the book takes you on an eye-opening tour of old shop
signs, remarkable trees, pagan rites and hundreds of other
curiosities that most Parisians are unlikely to know about.
There are also three themed walks and a street index,
usefully split up into arrondissements. ✮✮✮✮
The Templars’ Last Secret
Martin Walker, Quercus,
£18.99
Bruno Courrèges, chief of police in
a small Dordogne town, returns for
his tenth case in former Guardian
journalist Martin Walker’s engaging
crime series, which has been a hit
on both sides of the Channel. The
body of an unidentified woman is
found in a cave beneath the ruined Château de
Commarque near Sarlat-la-Canéda – but did she fall or was
she pushed? The castle has links with the Knights Templar,
and an archaeologist friend of Bruno’s believes the cave
holds the key to an age-old mystery. The author, who lives
in Périgord, puts his local knowledge to good use in a lively
tale that will have you longing for Dordogne. ✮✮✮✮
www.completefrance.com FRANCE MAGAZINE 93