Not Quite Nice

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BelleVu Sur Mer was just outside Nice and had a thriving ex pat community. The story centred mainly around Theresa who emigrated to France after being forced into early retirement. Sally a children's TV presenter who found herself typecast and never worked again. Glamorous Carol who made Theresa feel welcome and her husband David. Business woman Sian and her adulterous Australian husband Ted.

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This is an awful thing to say and I’ll probably get into trouble for it, but I slightly shy away when I hear an English voice in Nice. I want to stay in my little bubble of French life. So no, I don’t really know English people out here at all, which is how I like it. I can't say this was particularly well written - it seems that towards the end, the author just wanted to get this book done and get all the stories wrapped up, which led to some really implausible and far-fetched revelations. The characters, especially the children of two of the female characters, were caricatures of entitlement and nastiness. And there were a lot of characters! The main focus of the story is the characters, loveable eccentrics who you feel you’d love to meet and chat to. The plot is straight forward, with no great surprises, but enough to make an amusing and readable tale. Although the story is superficially light, there are two underlying ideas which are quite profound. The first is - don’t expect to understand your children and make expectations for them. The second is - be a bit selfish when the children have flown the nest, and do what you want to do, not what the family or society expect you to do.

I really enjoyed this light fluffy read – and can relate to feeling used and abused by a demanding selfish grown-up child who thinks that everything hubby and I worked hard for has to be handed to her on a platter. Sixty-year-old Theresa has one such child and when she is laid off from her job the thought of being an unpaid navvy for her daughter for her remaining years fills her with horror. So on impulse she buys a small house in the fictional town of Bellevue-sur-Mer just outside Nice in the south of France. So Theresa now lives not quite in the city of Nice and events that occur are not quite nice either – so I really appreciated the very clever title punning on the two meanings of ‘nice’..

Not Quite Nice (Bellevue-Sur-Mer, book 1) by Celia Imrie

Not Quite Nice is British actress Celia Imrie`s debut book. I read a lot of thrillers so Not Quite Nice made a fun, light hearted change. You have to be very self-disciplined. Normally, in my working life I’m told to turn up at rehearsal at a certain time and say someone else’s lines, which is easy. But with writing you really have to make yourself have a routine… I’ve tried to do the two [writing and acting] together but it isn’t a comfortable fit. I remember reading corrections and proofs of my book when I was in India filming The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which felt rather bizarre, the two worlds clashing. The discipline needed to be a writer is far greater than for an actor, so I have even more respect for writers now than I had before.

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In this delightful story, Imrie gives the reader a cast of (mostly) charming characters: a widowed ex-actress, a pair of gay men, a narcissistic elderly woman with a flair for cutting remarks, an apparently loving American couple, an Australian lothario and his jealous wife, a timid mother and her bullying son, an ex-prisoner, a self-centred daughter and her three spoiled children, a long-absent hippy son, an over-achieving daughter and a mysterious woman who claims to be recuperating.

Not Quite Nice by Celia Imrie | Goodreads

However, as Theresa begins to acclimatise to her new, independent life she soon discovers that you should be very careful what you wish for. Things may look greener on the other side of the Channel, but Nice and its inhabitants are not quite as nice as she first thought. One thing many of the characters have in common is their children are horrid. And I mean horrid. I can’t quite fathom that a/ children would treat their parents like they do in this book or b/ anyone would let their children treat them like they do in this book. I’m sorry, it’s unbelievable. Okay, so there might be people out there with awful children but I would assume they were horrible parents in the first place. These middle aged horrors seem to have all been hatched from hell with no help from their mother or father. One bad apple might be understandable but for these characters to *all* have such demon children is weird. This is an absolutely delightful novel that would be a pleasure to indulge in at any time - whether on holiday or just in the bath with a glass of wine. Celia Imrie effectively combines both drama and humour to offer the realisation that no matter how hard you try; one can never truly escape the past. - Tracy H.There are recipes dotted about between some of the chapters, mainly for Nicoise delicacies, which are always great to see, although as someone who doesn't cook, I can't really test them out or comment further on them. Theresa has lost her job and on impulse decides to "retire" to Southern France. She finds a lovely flat with a view of the harbor in Bellevue-Sur-Mer, a small village near Nice, where she meets a group of ex-pats, mostly British, who befriend her. But not all is perfect in paradise. A series of burglaries and a couple of vicious muggings have people on edge. Not to mention the family difficulties each of them has - cheating spouses, ungrateful children, dwindling funds, alcoholism, etc. Theresa is desperate for a change. Forced into early retirement, fed up with babysitting her bossy daughter's obnoxious children, she sells her Highgate house and moves to the picture-perfect town of Bellevue-sur-Mer, just outside Nice. We feel that Celia may have ‘borrowed’ the beginning of the book from ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ as her character in that goes to India to escape her demanding and ungrateful family.