Not Quite Nice

Product Information

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. 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.

Not Quite Nice - Imrie, Celia: 9781408846896 - AbeBooks

And there is Brian, who is there when Theresa is mugged on one of her first days in France, and helps her out and becomes her lodger. Brain also helps out, when Theresa starts running cooking classes for the ex-pats to gain an income.

Reviews

Opens: …The small town of Bellevue-Sur-Mer sparkled like a diamond on the French Mediterranean Coast... I’m terribly slow, actually, but at the moment I’m reading a book by Colette, My Apprenticeships and Music Hall Sidelights, I suppose because it’s got a theatrical thing going on. I like short stories – Patricia Highsmith’s The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder is a favourite. I’m so sad (mad?) that the only reason this was published was because it was written by a well known actress. Surely no publisher would have snapped up this mess on its own merits. 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. I want to go on and on about these English characters going to another country and only mingling with other English people when they get there but to point out how blatantly racist this is would just get me cranky again… I really feel for the poor locals.

Quiet or quite ? - Grammar - Cambridge Dictionary Quiet or quite ? - Grammar - Cambridge Dictionary

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. I enjoyed this book, and sailed through it in one read! Lots of interesting descriptions….took you to the Riviera in your dreams. Poor Theresa, so loving of her ungrateful, grabbing miserable family. Good for her making an ‘escape’. She did remain a loving mum however, always there for them and accepting when her silly daughter turned up on her doorstep. I loved the silliness and dotty characters…I really enjoyed this book about the over sixties and seventies inhabitants of Bellevu Sur Mere. Although this was a light hearted read Celia managed to weave some dark threads in the tale. Including a con man, muggings, burglaries and card cloning. There was also one big storyline I definitely did not see coming. Imogen, Therese's daughter, reminded me so much of Shirley Valentine's daughter, with her attitude towards her mother. She seems more worried about how the move will leave her babysitter less, than her mother's happiness.

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

Theresa is desperate for a change. Forced into early retirement and fed up with babysitting her bossy daughter's obnoxious children, she sells her house and moves to the picture-perfect town of Bellevue-sur-Mer, just outside Nice. I enjoyed the narration, even if there were some over the top voices and that the middle aged, male Australian poet accent and vocabulary was incredibly off mark, hideous and cringeworthy as it appeared to be styled on my brother when hanging out with his bogan mates. This is Celia Imrie’s first fictional book – and she has done very well by allowing humour to take over the story at times without it descending into silliness. The lightness balances nicely with the more drama ridden topics of infidelity, sex-changes, homosexuality, drug use and criminal activity. I was often laughing out loud at some of the events – gasping at some more meatier ones and then getting angry at the behaviour of a plethora of offspring that come to get what they can out of their various parents – or think they have the right to be rude to a parent who stands firm against them. The overall message is – it is your life, your needs and your choice. Do not let your children emotionally bully you. Learn to say no when it doesn’t suit you to do what they want.

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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. Actually they aren’t only English, there’s a couple of Americans and even an Australian (just don’t even get me started on this, I mean it's like Imrie decided to cast Paul Hogan or Bryan Brown's evil twin from the 80s into the role and we're supposed to think he's what? cute? funny? quirky? I can't even...) but they’re all white (diversity is merely the token gay couple) and all extremely non-French. So much for immersing yourself in the place. Shelve this book under "middle-aged woman rediscovers zest in her life" and "English people misbehaving abroad". This is light-hearted escapism, starting when Theresa, on a whim, buys a house in a lovely seaside town on the Riviera. The small community of English-speaking expatriates, embraces the new arrival, and soon Theresa is enjoying her new life. But it's not all baguettes and vin blanc , and drug dealers, con men and corporate spies soon appear on the scene. In her debut novel, Imrie has given us a sort of “coming of old age” story. I loved Theresa, though I wanted to shake her a few times when she put up with bad treatment by her ungrateful, selfish daughter and her bratty grandchildren. Still, this is a woman who has always done her best and who is slowly but surely realizing that she deserves some pleasure in life. The cast of supporting characters was marvelous as well: the smooth and attentive Brian; Sally a former British TV star; Americans Carol and David; “dragon lady” Sian and her philandering Aussie husband Ted; the witty, seemingly never aging octogenarian Zoe; compliant Faith and her pushy son Alfie who insists she needs a mansion rather than the small flat she’d prefer; and gay couple Benjamin and William.

Not Quite Nice: : Celia Imrie: Bloomsbury Publishing

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 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.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.