Not Quite Nice

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It's Mothers Day in the UK tomorrow and the disrespect and contempt Imogen showed Theresa annoyed me. Although the story is superficially light, there are two underlying ideas which are quite profound. The first is - don’t expect to understand your children and make expectations for them. The second is - be a bit selfish when the children have flown the nest, and do what you want to do, not what the family or society expect you to do. 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.

not quite | meaning of not quite in Longman Dictionary of not quite | meaning of not quite in Longman Dictionary of

Quite is a degree adverb. It has two meanings depending on the word that follows it: ‘a little, moderately but not very’ and ‘very, totally or completely’: This was a nice light read, describing the move to a little village just outside Nice on the French Riviera of a woman retrenched, badly treated by her daughter and grandchildren and looking for a new life in her retirement. I read this as an e-book, but I think it would be perfect as an audiobook, because I could just hear Celia Imrie narrating it. 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. 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.The book is set in the South of France, and its large than life characters sparkle with wit and life, the Mediterranean sea simmers with sunshine. When we use quite with a non-gradable adjective or adverb (an extreme adjective or adverb has a maximum and/or minimum, for example right – wrong), it usually means ‘very’, ‘totally’ or ‘completely’: 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. BelleVu Sur Mer was just outside Nice and had a thriving ex pat community. The story centred mainly around Theresa who emigrated to France after being forced into early retirement. Sally a children's TV presenter who found herself typecast and never worked again. Glamorous Carol who made Theresa feel welcome and her husband David. Business woman Sian and her adulterous Australian husband Ted.

Not Quite Nice by Celia Imrie | Goodreads

As Theresa settles to the gentle rhythm of seaside life she embraces her new-found friendships and freedom. However, life is never quite as simple as it seems and as skeletons start to fall out of several closets, Theresa begins to wonder if life on the French Riviera is quite as nice as it first appeared… Opens: …The small town of Bellevue-Sur-Mer sparkled like a diamond on the French Mediterranean Coast...Characters could have been built up more. Description of place was interesting, but could have been better to make me really want to go there’ This charming first novel by British actress Imrie (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Calendar Girls) extols 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. We often use not quite to mean ‘not completely’. We can use it with adjectives, adverbs, nouns, non-finite clauses, prepositional phrases and wh-clauses: