From Publishers Weekly
In this airy debut by an expat husband and wife team, an unlucky Tunisian spinster finds life and love in the City of Lights. Fatima Monsour is summoned to Paris when her sister, the Countess Poulais du Roc's maid, is killed in a freak accident. Things get off to a rocky start, as Fatima botches the countess's espresso order; almost loses her employer's beloved dog, Emma; and buys the wrong groceries because she can't read the list. But aided by her quirky neighbors at 34bis Avenue Victor-Hugo, including the flamboyant would-be writer Hadley Hadley III, the motley crew at nearby Cafe Jean Valjean and her new friends Victorine, a Senegalese housemaid, and Victorine's cousin, Samuel, she endures the comic trials of her new home. When Fatima saves Emma from near death, the lonely countess, who has no one but a kind, unambitious nephew and an estranged, ex-rocker daughter, feels beholden, and their relationship happily improves. Fate alternately smiles and frowns on the good-hearted Fatima. Though her heart was broken back on her Tunisian island home of Djerba, it seems she may even find love with Hippolyte Suget, a shy, divorced ex-robber with an angelic daughter. The plot meanders along a predictable path, and the numerous characters are no more complex than pretty paper dolls, but this Parisian fairy tale, in which an unlikely princess meets her improbable prince, is a frothy charmer.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
At first, it hardly seems that the title character in this first novel possesses good fortune. When her sister, a maid in Paris, dies in a freak accident, Fatima, recently abandoned by her husband, is offered the job by her sister's employer. Upon her arrival in France from her native Tunisia, Fatima feels overwhelmed by both the crowded city and her demanding employer, who is dismayed to learn that her new maid can't read. Gradually, though, as Fatima learns to read from her American neighbor, she settles into her new life, making several fast friends and even earning the affection of her employer. Almost without realizing it, Fatima slowly begins to feel she has found a new home. Many of the novel's pleasures are to be found in the supporting cast, including Hadley, Fatima's reading tutor, and Victorine, a boisterous African woman and fellow maid. Populated by a charming, eccentric cast of flawed yet good-hearted characters, the novel allows readers to believe that goodness is sometimes rewarded.
Beth LeistensniderCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
