A.N. Wilson

Bookends: Shady people in the sun

issue 26 May 2012

Carla McKay’s The Folly of French Kissing (Gibson Square, £7.99) is a very funny, cynical tale about British expatriates in the Languedoc. The blurb says ‘Toujours Provence meets Miss Marple’, though the heroine, Judith Hay, is less maidenly than the nosy-parker of St Mary Mead.

A middle-aged schoolmistress, she flees to the Languedoc because it is beautiful, because Montpellier has an English bookshop (called Wuthering Heights) and because the property is affordable: but also because she has a secret to put behind her.

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