The Second-Worst Restaurant in France

June 1, 2019
McCall Smith's sequel to My Italian Bulldozer (2017, etc.) switches its focus from Italy to a small French village where the earlier novel's hero, a Scottish food writer, falls into very mild adventures while trying to improve the local restaurant. After finishing his recent food guide to Tuscany, 36-year-old Paul Stuart has returned to Edinburgh and is living "part-time" with his editor/girlfriend, Gloria. But Gloria's cats prove an annoying distraction whenever Paul sits down to write his newly contracted book on the philosophy of food. When the already lukewarm romance with Gloria sputters out, he accepts an invitation from a relative known to their family as "Remarkable Cousin Chloe" to join her in a village near Poitiers. He's hoping he'll have the quiet and peace to finish his philosophy tome before his publisher's six-month deadline. Instead he ends up hanging out with 50-something Chloe and the landladies of the villa she has leased. These older women involve him in various escapades surrounding the local restaurant described by the novel's title. The waitress is busy hiding from her new baby's nefarious father, so Chloe and Paul volunteer to take over for her; the owner, who has no cooking skills, falls for Chloe while Paul finds an unlikely ally in turning the food service around. Paul comments that Chloe strikes him as belonging to an earlier era "when people made tactless remarks and rarely apologized for what they were." Actually, Chloe's list of ex-husbands, her mysterious, rather daring career, and her New Age-y politics of kindness make her seem a more contemporary, as well as more intriguing, character than Paul himself. He's a young fogey who exhibits the formal, bloodless sensibility of someone around 70 (McCall Smith's age)--affronted by students playing loud music, he rejects passes from several young women and is tired of song lyrics about love. McCall Smith knows how to turn a phrase, but this novel never rises above a low simmer.

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July 19, 2019

Cookbook author Paul Stuart finds it difficult to get any writing done in this second installment in the series (after My Italian Bulldozer). Paul's new girlfriend Gloria, who also happens to be his editor, moves in without being invited, bringing with her two Siamese cats, who make it nearly impossible for Paul work. With his love life on the fritz and a new title on the philosophy of food due in only six months, he turns to his older cousin, Chloe. She invites him to travel to France, where she rents a house every year. Paul finally gets some peace and quiet, but soon the two become friendly with the twins who own the house, agreeing to dine in their restaurant, which has a bad reputation. Paul eats mussels and suffers from a bout of food poisoning. Once recovered, he is talked into teaching the chef how to cook, so that the restaurant might flourish. VERDICT This is a charming tale with delightful descriptions of the French countryside and cooking. Unfortunately, the main character is rather a young "old-fuddy-duddy." Chloe is by far more lovable. Still, it is sure to please the author's many fans. [See Prepub Alert, 1/23/19.]--Nanci Milone Hill, M.G. Parker Memorial Lib., Dracut, MA

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Starred review from May 15, 2019
The wildly prolific McCall Smith adds yet another series hero, Paul Stuart, to a list that includes Botswanan Precious Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency; philosopher Isabel Dalhousie, of Edinburgh, who solves friends' problems in the series bearing her name; and Inspector Varg, of Sweden. This is actually the second Paul Stuart book, but the first, My Italian Bulldozer (2017), seemed like a quirky stand-alone about a man who somehow is forced to drive a bulldozer around Tuscany. But Paul, who has a beyond-enviable career as a successful cookbook writer and a unenviable way of getting entangled in perplexing situations, is back, this time in a less gimmicky adventure. Paul lives in Edinburgh, in a home with a view of the castle, but whose interior is ruled by the sociopathic-leaning Siamese cats of his editor/girlfriend. Deliverance from the ferocious felines comes with an invitation from his third cousin Chloe to finish his current book at her home in the French countryside. Chloe, with a slew of ex-husbands and lovers in her wake, is somewhat of a Wife of Bath figure, who keeps breaking into the account of Paul's writing pilgrimage to tell her own wacky stories. A hugely entertaining novel about a man who keeps getting into scrapes yet somehow finds his own way out of them.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)