Review: The Little French Bistro
60-year old Marianne Messmann has decided to throw herself off the Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris. Most people come to Paris to fall in love; for Marianne, it’s the place she will escape from a loveless marriage forever. But when a good Samaritan pulls Marianne out of the Seine, she must find a new method of escape from her monstrous mister. Queue the road trip, a beautiful new seaside locale, a scenic little French bistro, and a bohemian cast of exotic new friends.
The Little French Bistro is the typical Journey to Self-Discovery story, and it was very much not the story for me. The fact that Marianne is in her sixties somehow sailed over my head when I read the synopsis for this book, and her age, marital status, and craven personality made her all but impossible for me to sympathize with. One of my biggest issues with Marianne has to do with her backstory: Why did she even marry Lothar in the first place? It seems he was never a good man, and I don’t get the impression she ever truly loved him. This troublesome marriage is the leaping off point (no pun intended) for the whole story, so my reluctance to buy into its genuineness biased my opinion of the rest of the story.
My next issue with the book was far more important, however: The Little French Bistro is not a plot-heavy book. And that’s fine. I find literary fiction and self-discovery stories tend to be more plot-light and character-driven. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that that method worked well in this novel. There is a sizeable cast full of side stories and dramas, but I didn’t feel that I spent enough time with those characters and their stories to be very sympathetic towards them either. I wanted more of their stories and more involvement in them from Marianne.
I also wanted this to be a novel set in a little French bistro – as the title would lead one to believe – but the bistro is very much the vanilla backdrop for this story. When Marianne arrives in Kerdruc, she’s mistaken for the new foreign chef the bistro is expecting (and whom interestingly never shows up), and she’s taken in and given rooms by the restaurant’s owner. A fair portion of the story does take place in/near/around the bistro and its seating out by the water, but it’s not done in a way that the bistro is a necessary part of the story. This story almost could have taken place anywhere, which is a problem if your setting is also your title. Perhaps that’s nitpicky, but the bistro could have been made a larger part of the story (give me more action in the kitchen, for example) and much more enchanting.
All in all, I struggled to get through this book. I would put it down for solid weeks at a time and only managed to convince myself to finish it so that I could move on to a new book. It is a quick read once you’re in it – the prose is not difficult, the plot does not require much thought, you’re not going to get stopped by serious moral issues, etc. – but it was difficult for me to get into.
I think this is definitely a book that will hold more weight with mature individuals who can identify with Marianne. I recommend this book to an older audience seeking a quick read.
*
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