ANTOINE LAURAIN'S PAGE: An Astronomer in Love; Red Is My Heart; The Readers' Room

THE READERS' ROOM
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Jane Aitken & Emily Boyce, Polly Mackintosh)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When the manuscript of a debut crime novel arrives at a Parisian publishing house, everyone in the readers' room is convinced it's something special. And, when it’s eventually published, the committee for France's highest literary honour, the Prix Goncourt, agrees.

But when the shortlist is announced, there's a problem for glamorous editor Violaine Lepage: she has no idea of the author's identity. As the police begin to investigate a series of murders strangely reminiscent of those recounted in the book, Violaine is not the only one looking for answers. And, suffering memory blanks following an aeroplane accident, she's beginning to wonder what role she might play in the story – as well as how to find the mystery author before the prize is announced.

In the end it will take the combined investigative powers of a detective, a junior editor, and Violaine’s therapist to uncover the truth. They will learn not just about the author of the book, but about the story’s origins, and the novel’s strange power to exact justice for violence done to a young girl decades ago. But when everything comes to light, one question will remain: can Violaine and the other readers of the mystery manuscript put the past to rest, and find happiness in the present?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A fun, middlebrow light mystery about bookish people doing not-bookish things to discover the unexpected connection of writer to subject.

What worked best was the mystery of who the PoV character was before the accident that alters her. I found the brevity of the book (under 200pp) militated against it becoming fully integrated between the editor and the subject of police interest.

It's another entertaining story, albeit with less of Author Laurain's customary whimsical humor (feels odd saying that, given the main character awakes to having a chat with Proust), from France's Fredrik Backman. Laurain's comparative anonymity in the US is bewildering to me. I find his stories are pitched directly at my pleasure-read center, unlike Backman's. This cultural exploration, of a bit more serious tone, is also of a bit more serious topic: the murders, and other crimes, in the editor's manuscript received from a source unknown, coming true after the publication of the book suggests something very sinister took place. Her memory is compromised by the very public plane crash; did she ever know (despite consistently denying it) before her accident the truth of this manuscript?

It's a lot to put in a short space but this keeps the pace snappy. I was, as always, struck by Author Laurain's very unamerican way of keeping the violence and ugliness of the crimes either off the page entirely or minimally dealt with and then only in aftermath not in the commission of the crimes. I found it refreshing in a story that is not a conventional US-style cozy.

It's also not much of a mystery, in its resolution it felt rushed and obvious. So why am I giving it four stars? Because it feels like a dreamland, twilight between reality and not-reality throughout. From awakening into that chat with Proust to discovering she's got big memory-holes, the main character is off balance and so we are too. It's a way not to have our realism addiction denied by flying into the fantasy realm but not having it drag our awareness into the cleaning closet of realism there to be doused with the chlorine bleach of literalism.

I enjoy that liminality; I know others don't but always hope they'll be tempted to try something more...French, ambiguous, unbounded by rules of genre.

Can't hang me for hoping. (Yet.)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

AN ASTRONOMER IN LOVE
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Louise Rogers Lalaurie & Megan Jones)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, pre-order now for delivery on 3 February 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the best-selling author of The Red Notebook comes the enchanting story of two men, 250 years apart, who find themselves on separate missions to see the transit of Venus across the Sun.

In 1760, astronomer Guillaume le Gentil sets out on a quest through the oceans of India to document the transit of Venus. The weather is turbulent, the seas are rough, but his determination will conquer all.

In 2012, divorced estate agent Xavier Lemercier discovers Guillaume’s telescope in one of his properties. While looking out across the city, the telescope falls upon the window of an intriguing woman with what appears to be a zebra in her apartment.

Then the woman walks through the doors of Xavier’s office a few days later, and his life changes for evermore . . .

Part swashbuckling adventure on the high seas and part modern-day love story set in the heart of Paris, An Astronomer in Love is a time-travelling tale of adventure, destiny and the power of love.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Guillaume le Gentil had to feel there was a bullseye on his back and gawd was always aimimg some kind of malign force at it. Nevertheless he persisted; he accomplished more than most will in a lifetime but failed spectacularly to accomplish the fame-bringing prize of observing the Transit of Venus. He was always trying to get where he needed to be, always thwarted by stuff he could not influence or change or avoid. How to get his Transit of Venus on one of the only two chances that come in any human lifetime?

Xavier Lemercier has a void at the center of his life after his divorce. He needs a woman to fill it. His real-estate career is nothing but a way to earn a living. What he wants is what we all want, someone who really *gets* him and whom he *gets* in the same way; someone with that fit between them that is as firm and solid as a lock receiving its key. How to find this, when he's already experienced failure, when he's always doing the business of life...?

The dual timelines aren't separated by chapters, or sections, or other structural tricks. They're separated by your attention. The maguffin here is Le Gentil's telescope that comes into Lemercier's possession via a real-estate transaction. Each man hopes to see his life change through its eyepiece. And both do. Just not ever quite as expected....

Will you resonate to these men's struggles to get to their hearts' desires? I'm guessing so; you'll need to be ready to invest a lot of energy into the under-300pp of fully intertwined life stories. There's a lot going on, yet a curious lack of direct action. This is a character-driven story of accepting limitations and finding a path through them, one that enriches your Self, despite (or because of) never being direct or going the easy route.

It was a satisfying read though lighter on Laurain's whimsical humor than I myownself prefer. It felt as though I was speaking to someone I had not heard from in a while, listening as he caught me up on the unusually packed time he'd been having. It's not perfect...I mentioned it's a bit po-faced for my preference, and a wee bit more action would not come amiss...but it was a rich, mellow mug of chocolate to warm my needing innards exactly when I needed it.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

RED IS MY HEART
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Jane Aitken), illus. Le Sonneur
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A moving, evocative exploration of heartbreak and healing in Paris, told through words and images in this stunning collaboration with French street artist Le Sonneur

How can you mend a broken heart? Do you write a letter to the woman who left you—and post it to an imaginary address? Buy a new watch, to reset your life? Or get rid of the jacket you wore every time you argued, because it was in some way responsible?

Combining the wry musings of a rejected lover with playful drawings in just three colours—red, black and white—one of France’s best-selling authors has collaborated with renowned street artist Le Sonneur to create a striking addition to the literature of unrequited love, and a moving, evocative exploration of heartbreak in one of the world’s great cities.

In this playful, poignant series of musings, a nameless narrator remembers a love affair just gone, watches the flight they were due to take to New York depart, sends flowers to a woman who died a century ago, smokes ostentatiously in front of No Smoking signs, and takes solace from the endless distractions and beauty of the city he calls home, Paris. If he walks these streets long enough—the streets of the City of Light, City of Love—he may find himself ready to love again.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is as close as I (voluntarily) come to poetry. Reminiscent of the concrete poetry that was popular in the 1960s, this illustrated trip into the psyche of a man processing his grief at loving and losing is evocative, emotionally resonant:

I hasten to say the text isn't arranged in flowers or birds flying, more just that the illustrations are copious in number and the text flows in response to them, reminiscent to me of old-timey concrete poetry. The prose is, of necessity, spare; it is making the points the many illustrations are expanding on and evoking responses from.

I'm not the obvious reader for a melancholic, perhaps under-reflective man's internal monologue. I wanted him to have a name so I could shout it at him to get him to see what was in front of him not merely look at it. Acts of adolescent defiance like the highlighted smoking in front of a "No Smoking" sign don't seem cute to me, just...adolescent.

I'm not making a great case for you to pick it up, am I? It's down to my absence of sympathy with things poetical. If you're not so inclined either, not a read to pursue. If, on the other hand, you're amenable to blank verse with integrated illustrations that are, in my opinion, very attractive indeed, you are exactly who the book is made for.

And consider this: I really dislike poetry, and still read this book, still liked this book...Author Laurain is clearly A Talent.It's very unusual for me to do more than look at poetry and slam the book shut, chuck it into the donation pile, and forget it exists.

On that grading curve, my 3.75* looks almost like a full five.

ANTOINE LAURAIN'S PAGE: THE PORTRAIT, firstborn fiction by the author; & FRENCH RHAPSODY, meditation on Les Jadis and how much today is the same

FRENCH RHAPSODY
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Emily Boyce & Jane Aitken)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.9* of five

The Publisher Says: Middle-aged doctor Alain Massoulier has received a life-changing letter—thirty-three years too late.

Lost in the Paris postal system for decades, the letter from Polydor, dated 1983, offers a recording contract to The Holograms, in which Alain played lead guitar. Back then The Holograms had believed in their cutting-edge sound. However, the music industry remained indifferent, and eventually the band split up, each going their own way.

Alain is overcome by nostalgia, and is tempted to track down the members of the group. But in a world where everything and everyone has changed . . . where will his quest take him?

Antoine Laurain's new novel combines his trademark charm with a satirical take on modern France.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Republication of these titles comes after Gallic Books' acquisition by Pushkin Press is picking up steam. I'm all over it, I loved Gallic Books and am (obviously) fond of Pushkin Press (and imprints).

In this rather odd tale, we go down the rabbit hole of missed chances. Every person this accident of fate changed came under Author Laurain's scrutiny in separate chapters, with life stories and so on. It made for nice reading...but what was I supposed to get from these stories? I know them but possess no framework to see what I'm to make of the fates of the post-The Holograms members. Maybe I'm insufficiently au fait with modern French society to get the full import of the meaning.

That said, I really resonated to the right-wing politician's trajectory, he who was the bassist. I've forgotten his name because I despise his politics (and his screed-spouting lectures) and, like Endora from Bewitched, I forget the names of those I dislike. Nonetheless, I thought it was very interesting to read about whatsisname's trajectory. How he got into it, what he does...all very timely. Especially for a book first published in 2015....

The others stuck with me less but were absorbing enough that I kept picking the book up to read more every time I put something else down. A clutter of wacky neighbors and hero's-journey cicerones detract from the central story's momentum, none of whom end up making a real difference. I found the ending...pat.

So I'm rating it only a tad under four stars. I got chuckles, I got angry mutterings, but I never got bored. That, my olds, is worth a lot in a literary month cram-jam full of heaps of nothing interesting.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE PORTRAIT
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Emily Boyce & Jane Aitken)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A Parisian antiques collector finds himself in a case of mistaken identity after buying a portrait which curiously resembles him

While wandering through a Paris auction house, avid collector Pierre-François Chaumont is stunned to discover the eighteenth-century portrait of an unknown man who looks just like him. Much to his delight, Chaumont's bid for the work is successful, but back at home his jaded wife and circle of friends are unable to see the resemblance. Chaumont remains convinced of it, and as he researches into the painting's history, he is presented with the opportunity to abandon his tedious existence and walk into a brand new life.

Chaumont needs a fresh start—he and his wife fell out of love long ago, and the only thing that holds meaning for him anymore is his search for perfect objects. But this portrait is more than just a painting. The first night he owns it, Pierre-François dreams of another life, lived as the Comte de Mandragore, in a rural chateau, with a beautiful young wife. Awaking from the dream he’s determined to find this place—but it will take all his collector’s avidity, ingenuity, and unscrupulousness to make it his own. And when he finally has the chance to do so, will he be willing to pay the price to make it last?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Republication of these titles comes after Gallic Books' acquisition by Pushkin Press is picking up steam. I'm all over it, I loved Gallic Books and am (obviously) fond of Pushkin Press (and imprints).

This is the novella that started it all. Told in first-person, it's as immediate as a récit but takes place outside the narrator's skull, so it's not one. It's a sweetly-smiling stab at modern greed, the lust for Stuff that fills the gaping emotional holes in many modern people.

There's a sharp edge here, a flensing eye that spares no one...the unloved, unloving wife, their circle of "friends", the man himself...no one looks all that good under the pithy judgment of Author Laurain:

Modern eyes? They have no soul; they no longer look up to heaven. Even the most pure are only concerned with the immediate. Vulgar lust, petty self-interest, greed, vanity, prejudice, cowardly appetites and envy. Those are the abominable emotions swarming in today’s eyes. We have the souls of notaries and cooks. That’s why the eyes on the portraits in museums are so spectacular; they reflect prayers and tortures, regrets and remorse.

What a pompous peroration! What a quiet proof that simply being misunderstood and softly maligned does not equal being Right.

It's an afternoon's read. It will keep you involved if, like me, you think Stuff is an addiction that speaks more loudly about what it is...about greedily stuffing yourself...than what it isn't...a fulfilling and worthwhile use of you one wild and precious life (that endlessly apt and beautiful phrase from Mary Oliver).

I think it's evident it's a first work, the sheer improbability of the plot is up there with Thorne Smith that whole school of magical objects that open portals from modern to ancient (ot just other) times. The characters are, as is almost inevitable in novellas, not developed beyond the necessity of moving the plot forward.

It's a pleasant and worthwile read. Maybe don't hunt for it everywhere, but if you have the budget and the device, download it of a dull Sunday afternoon to enjoy its real pleasures.

THE RED NOTEBOOK, what Queen Camilla calls “Parisian perfection”

THE RED NOTEBOOK
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Jane Aitken & Emily Boyce)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In this bestselling novel, a bookseller pursues a mystery woman—known only through the jottings in her red notebook—through the streets of Paris

Bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street, and feels compelled to return it to its owner. Quickly ruling out the police station, which is always best avoided, he turns the contents out onto his kitchen table to see if they hold a clue. The bag contains no money, phone or contact information. But it does yield a small red notebook, full of handwritten thoughts and jottings that reveal someone Laurent would very much like to meet. From the lists of likes and dislikes, things noticed and things felt, emerges the portrait of a woman who might just be his soulmate.

But without even a name to go on, and only a few of her possessions to help him, how is he to find one woman in a city of millions? He’ll have to turn to his daughter, who helps him decode the possessions and sends him on a madcap journey around the French capital.

Meanwhile, in an anonymous hospital room, fragmentary thoughts float through the mind of a woman in a coma. She thinks she’s called Laure, and she has some strong opinions and painful memories – but will she ever wake up and get a fresh chance at life?

Soaked in Parisian atmosphere, this lovely, clever, funny novel is the perfect French holiday read!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Author Antoine Laurain (Vintage 1954) is a major bestseller in the UK. Given how much y'all like those Japanese weird-bookshop-soulmate-finding books, why haven't you gone all-in for this guy?

The absolute perfect one-sitting read, a novella about a bookseller in Paris turning detective in the wake of a violent crime he knows nothing about. His motive is to find the owner of a red notebook full of her jottings but noticeably devoid of a name or an address.

What happens to Laurent the bookseller as he reads the notebook is the magical sense that the writer is his soulmate, long lost other half, all those romantic notions that plague us harder in warm weather. He uses the list, with his daughter's help, to scour the city to "reunite" with this dream woman he's never met.

This gives Author Laurain a chance to rhapsodize about his native Paris. This he does with a facility I can but admire from a distance; he evokes Paris as a living city not a tourist theme park in just over 150pp! It gives the reader as lovely an experience as going there does without the hassle of plane travel.

The resolution isn't mysterious; or the point, really. It's a story about how a decent guy can act stalkery, but get away with it by knowing he's treading a really fine line, adjusting his expectations, and still managing to find who he's looking for. He does nothing to indicate he thinks he's got a right to his mystery love's returned affection. He is honest throughout with himself and all around him about his intentions but never claims he is entitled to anything from the woman he doesn't know just because he's fallen for her.

Honestly impressive feat on Author Laurain's part. Still it *will* trigger some, so be advised it's in the story. I was a bit less impressed with the way the PoV shifts between Laure, the woman, and Laurent were handled. It takes little enough to put a break in the text; nothing literary was gained by not having one. I dinged a half-star for positive mention of c-a-ts. *shudder*

A lovely summer vacation in Paris with little fuss. What's not to love about that?

SMOKING KILLS, deeply French story made accessible to Anglophone readers

SMOKING KILLS
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Louise Rogers Lalaurie)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, preorder for delivery on 5 May 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this cozy crime novel with a witty, Parisian black-comedy twist, anti-hero Fabrice can only make smoking pleasurable by committing the ultimate crime

How far would you go to enjoy a cigarette?

When headhunter Fabrice Valantine faces a smoking ban at work, he decides to undertake a course of hypnotherapy to rid himself of the habit. At first the treatment works, but his stress levels begin to rise when he is passed over for an important promotion and he finds himself lighting up again—but with none of his previous enjoyment.

Then he discovers something terrible: he accidentally causes a man’s death, and, needing a cigarette to calm his nerves, he enjoys it more than any other previous smoke. What if he now needs to kill someone every time he wants to properly appreciate his next Benson and Hedges?

Unwilling to return to the numbness of a life without pleasurable smoking, Fabrice launches into a life of crime, finding ever more original murder methods—including the use of a poisonous Ecuadorean frog.

A blackly comic story of addiction and transgression, this is also an exploration of the human need for fulfillment, and the lengths we will go to in order to find it. In the end the book provokes us to question the limits we place on ourselves, and the true definition of joy.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Fabrice Valantine is in prison. He is so an unrepentant smoker, as the title implies, that he sees the joy of smoking as superseding others' right to life. Not quite the spin on the title you expected, eh what?

How a professional headhunter (noun Wiktionary serves three senses of the word:
A savage who cuts off the heads of his enemies, and preserves them as trophies.
One who recruits senior personnel for a company.
A pitcher who throws at the batter's head.)
Of these three I think the fairest to apply here is the third; the author intends the second; and implicit in all three is the first) with a genuine love affair with/oral fixation on the dick-shaped tubes of chemicals that, when ignited, provide particulate delivery directly into one's mucous membranes...and those of hundreds of others who happen to be passing by. When absolutely, as a condition of employment, required to stop smoking, Fabrice resorts to hypnotism. It works.

Sort of.

Fabrice loses the pleasure of smoking ("I faced these painful hours with no solace whatsoever, just the dusty taste of my cigarettes and the utter ineffectiveness of the nicotine"), not the need to smoke. Until after an awful, awful accident where someone loses their future to death due to his carelessness, the frisson of smoking returns. So it wasn't permanently removed by hypnosis, only recalibrated to require extreme stimulation to experience it. Being a smoker therefore selfish and self-obsessed, this shows a path forward into pleasure that Fabrice, narrating his story from prison, chooses to follow. But he's careful! He only kills those whose loss won't matter! Isn't he due a reward for, as I often say, cleanin' the gene pool?

A fantastical noir-tinged laugh-out-loud satire of capitalism is one way to see this story. So is a comedy of manners, replete with stock characters (Fabrice as Gordon Gekko leaps to mind). Most of all, though, I want you to read this pinnacle of the translator's art. Louise Rogers Lalaurie has rendered into high-level, delightfully readable English one of the most vibe-dependent reads from the very French pen of Author Laurain. It's not this team's first collaboration...I do not know if the author and the translator worked together to create their magic, but I'm inclined to view the evidence as supporting that interpretation...as the current rush of Pushkin Press's republications attests. I'm a fan because I think Author Laurain chooses his targets well. I'm a fan because the translator understands on a deep level the targets, their cultural position in France, and the sense of the language the author chooses to use and renders it into a different culture recognizably. Her skill is to make this extremely French book humorous in the extremely different cultural valences of English. That is a tremendous skill.

A book to savor like one's last cigarette.

VINTAGE 1954, a time-travel jeu d'esprit with heart and mischief for all

VINTAGE 1954
ANTOINE LAURAIN (tr. Jane Aitken & Emily Boyce)
Pushkin Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available 2 September 2025

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When Hubert Larnaudie invites some fellow residents of his Parisian apartment building to drink an exceptional bottle of 1954 Bordeaux, he has no idea of its special properties.

The following morning, Hubert finds himself waking up in 1950s Paris, as do antique restorer Magalie, mixologist Julien, and Airbnb tenant Bob from Milwaukee, who's on his first trip to Europe.

After their initial shock, the city of Edith Piaf and An American in Paris begins to work its charm on them. The four delight in getting to know the French capital during this iconic period, whilst also playing with the possibilities that time travel allows.

But, ultimately, they need to work out how to get back to 2017. And the key lies in a legendary story and the vineyards of the Chateau St Antoine...

THE PUBLISHER PROVIDED ME WITH A DRC VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: There's a lot to be said, in this Giddy Season, for retreating to your phone and reading something unchallenging, fun, and still...outside the norm, able to show you something you wouldn't expect to get while being fluffed. This story, by a born-and-bred Parisian (it's like being a multigeneration Manhattanite is in the US), is a time-travel fantasy about les jadis. First we must have The Couple. They are Julien, grandson of a man who saw a flying saucer...twice!...and Magalie, a Goth chick. Both are born and raised in Paris, though not of Old Families. They're perfect for each other. They just don't know it yet. They live in little apartments at 18, Rue Edgar-Charillier; Magalie has a studio on the ground floor where she plies her trade as an antiques restorer. Julien is a mixologist at Harry's New York bar, a legendary watering hole and now tourist spot. They're the modern young Parisians, not beholden to bureaucracy or Big Business, but nimble gig-economy hustlers.

Then we have Tradition. He (of course) is duty, honor, and boredom personified in Hubert Larnaudie. He is also a bombastic old Gaul:

‘Because of my position as chairman of the management committee, and my family history, it falls to me to defend … our patrimony!’ he concluded emphatically.

Hubert, dreary sort that he is, owns an apartment in a building once his own family's. But that means he has a LOT of stuff in his various storage spaces. This will become important. He is a bureaucrat, mais naturellement, a property management managerial drone; he also sits on the apartment house's board. But of course.

Then, to balance our wheel, we must have The Stranger. Bob from Milwaukee is, well, a very Euro vision of the Good-Hearted American:

‘Didn’t the Americans take Lafayette’s cash during the War of Independence?’ ‘Yes …’ Hubert conceded. ‘Well, consider me your Lafayette,’ Bob said resolutely.

He's in Paris without his deeply beloved wife, Goldie, whose coma is irreversible and who, countless people tell him, would insist he use the tickets to Paris that they'd intended to use for their anniversary. Alone in Paris, desperately sad, Bob's Airbnb apartment is in the building...and thus are our time travelers assembled.

What happens is the dream of a UFOlogist's dream. Julien's grandfather's fame resulting from his 1954 UFO encounter in a Saint-Antoine vineyard is family lore; but Larnaudie happens to have a bottle of it in his cellar (from which he has only that day needed rescuing by the American and his two fellow tenants). The four share the bottle, totter off to their separate couches...and awake in the same building, only somehow in 1954! They leave the 21st century as they step outside.

Audrey Hepburn. Harry's New York Bar, with Harry MacElhone in it. Robert Doisneau. Les Halles intact, just as Napoleon III saw them last. Piaf and Gabin having dinner together!! What a bloody glorious bottle of wine! Of course the time travelers are utterly bumfuzzled, broke, and homeless. This problem is resolved by Bob the American changing his American money, famously unchanged in looks for generations, into the old francs in use in 1954. (Never mind the big-head portraits on the bills we've got now! Go with it.) And Hubert knows the apartment across from his grand-père, now his own, is empty because family lore says the cousin it belonged to was in Chile...for twenty-five years! All Hubert needs to do is get the key from the concierge by pretending to be the cousin. Shelter = solved.

Only the concierge remembers the cousin...she proves to be elozable, though, so some francs later the four get to lay their weary heads down. And from there...the problem of how to get back to 2017 (why would they want to, I wonder) looms large until Julien recalls a fictional 1950s absent-minded professor called Charles Arpajon, whose 1955 (not a typo) book on UFOs as time-travel machines not space-travel ones he has read. The Scooby-group hotfoots their way to the train for the Saint-Antoine vineyard where the UFO sighting is about to take place....

I don't need to tell you the rest, you know we're all going to be okay in the end. The suspense here is minimal at best. What the point of this read is: Comfort. Four 2017 people Forrest-Gump their way through 1954 Paris, then the lost agrarian joys of the pays et temps perdu. It is a gentle and delightful caper through time, if not space. The author, whose previous whimsical works I would now like to read, is very Britishly translated into vernacular British..."sellotape" says it all...with four foul, reeking w-bombs to ruin my read. Why on this wide green Earth are there still people using "to w-i-n-k" as though it meant something clever? It's creepy.

But aside from that cavil, my thoughts on this book's appeal center on its ability to lull your anxiety centers and soothe your story cravings while delivering resolutions to all problems for all the people we've invested our three hours in. Really welcome in the Silly Season of family gatherings, work parties, and suchlike exhaustions. Load the Kindlebook onto your phone for $9.50, read it in bits and snatches...you'll recall everything because it's all right there.

Satisfying, savorable civet for your ease and delectation.