Most helpful customer reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Adventure in paradise, Feb 25 2003
This is a frothy, fun, food-filled adventure suspense story set in the author's deliciously described Provence along the Mediterranean littoral. An end-of-his-wits ex-pat Britisher accepts an innocuously luxurious job helping to dodge a rich crook's taxes and then his life turns potentially ugly. Mayle never realizes the ugliness; despite the ominous events no one is actually damaged, for the tone and intent is an appetizing entertainment rather than engrossing suspense. The villains are sinister and smooth, the locals are crotchety, while the victims are an engaging couple in love and on the run...and as larcenous at heart as any of the crooks and cops. Peter Mayle has an urbane light touch, almost tongue-in-cheek, but precisely expressed in crystal-clear prose and well-turned with finely crafted sentences. The pb is pleasant to hold, with a flexible letherette feel and generous typography, a true trade pb rather than a pulp novel, although ultimately no more satisfying than a meal of meringue.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Better at non-fiction, but interesting just the same, Jan 27 2003
Having thoroughly enjoyed Peter Mayle's best-selling non-fictional (mostly) account of life in Rural France (A Life in Provence), I long meant to give his fiction a try. I'm not a real dog-lover, so A Dog's Life didn't intrigue me, and the jacket copy for Hotel Pastis didn't lend it to immediate reading, either. But the cover for Anything Considered, showing a cast of characters straight out of a CLUE game, and the premise--an Englishman in France, desperate for a job, places an advert in the international paper saying that he was looking for employment and "anything considered"--sounded so close to a Wodehousian experience, that I could not resist it. Even the title was similar to Wodehouse.Unfortunately, while comic and filled with mistaken identities and misunderstood intentions, Mayle's touch with the material is quite different. I enjoyed the novel, but there's something missing to it, as if Mayle had all the ingredients at his fingertips, but didn't turn the temperature on the oven up high enough. There's no faulting his craftsmanship--the words flow smoothly enough, and nothing is so jarring as to ruin the plot--but the art seems forced, rather than organic. Bennett is the Englishman who is desperate for anything, who finds himself hired by a fellow who simply wants him to live in the style to which Bennett has become accustomed, with the slight deviation of returning a different name than his own when asked. He goes to Monaco, using this man's credit cards, living in this man's apartment, basically enjoying the life of Riley. But there's trouble lurking, something to do with the truffle market and the Mafia. It's all grand fun, but Mayle never quite convinces the reader that his world is an innocuous one, and so the reader keeps expecting the worst to happen, rather than just another close shave. Rereading the above, it sounds like I hated the novel, which I did not. In fact, I bought Hotel Pastis based on my impression of this book. I just had expected more from Mayle, and was letdown by my expectations, not by his actual book.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Enjoyable lightweight suspense, Aug 4 2002
This was my first experience reading Peter Mayle, who is best known for nonfiction about Southern France, the setting for this novel. The title comes from an ad placed by English expatriate Bennett (who only uses his last name). Bennett finds himself short on money as his real estate business falters. A sybarite without any particular direction in life, he advertises for unusual employment, adding "anything considered but marriage." One of the replies to this ad is from Julian Poe, a rather sinister English aristocrat whose wealth comes from unspecified sources. Bennett is told all he has to do is live in Poe's apartment in Monaco. This will enable Poe to avoid French taxes and allow Bennett to live in luxury. Things quickly become complicated, of course. Poe is actually part of a scheme to produce truffles,a frightfully expensive but apparently delicious (but all but impossible to grow) fungus. The plot from here turns into an unlikely, tongue-in-cheek spy thriller. Bennett finds an assistant and ally in Anna, a beautiful and resourceful ex-soldier. The two are pursued by several competing gangs of criminals as well as the French police. There is never a fear that anything really bad will happen to the pair. In many ways, the plot is secondary to the lush descriptions of the countryside and the gourmet meals favored by Bennett. I enjoyed it with some reservations. This is the sort of light reading favored by the highbrow set. Mayle is obviously very much enamored of a slow-paced, leisurely life where no one works very hard and the countryside is the material for landscapes, or at least postcards. The town where Bennett lives, Saint Martin le Vieux, is a rich person's idealization of the simple but robust rustic life. The book is very readable and the plot, though deliberately improbable, unfolds smoothly. I enjoyed it, and those not afflicted with my modern urban cynicism will probably enjoy it even more.
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by Peter Mayle
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