The Little French Bistro

What a disappointment. I so enjoyed The Little Paris Bookstore, by Nina George, that I pleasantly anticipated reading this selection for our upcoming book group. The parallels to the first book are significant, a protagonist who has existed for decades without love suddenly realizes there is more to life during a journey of self-discovery. I almost never disagree with Kirkus reviews, who found this book to be "a satisfying virtual visit to the French Riviera," but I found the plot to be utterly predictable and the prose to be overblown. I would put that down to translation except that the first translated book was done by the same guy, Simon Pare.
Marianne is sick of her life and especially her unfathful and condescending husband. While with him on a tour in France, she sneaks away from dinner and attempts to drown herself in the Seine, only to be rescued by a homeless man and taken to a hospital, where her husband catches up with her and tells the doctor she is mentally ill.
Once again, Marianne makes her escape with suicide in mind and this time, inspired by a colorful ceramic tile she saw in the nurses' station, she heads for the coast to a tiny fishing village called Kerdruc, where she plans to walk into the sea. She is immediately adopted by an entangled group of locals (for more detail, see the NYTimes review) and made the chef's assistant at a local bistro. And of course she meets someone and falls in love. She has already fallen in love with the sea, the food, the countryside....and has begun playing the accordion again. Someone just happened to have a spare one lying around. She does not know what to do about her marital situation and chooses not to discuss it with anyone, until her husband makes a public appeal on TV and everyone recognizes her. She tries to run away again, this time from the people in Kerdruc, and go back to her husband. Realizing she has changed too much to make this possible, she returns to Kerdruc, her lover, and everyone else's romantic problems in the village are solved in the last chapter. Oh please spare me.
The reviewers all liked the book, however: Publishers Weekly, Washington Post, New York Times.