Their ‘friends’ include an obligatory gay couple, a stylish American couple, an older botoxed-to-the-hilt loudmouth drunk, the mousy nondescript newbie, a corporate highflyer (whose first scene involving her slapping Theresa like some sort of trashy Dr Phil guest is too ridiculous for words) and her philandering poet of a husband. 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.

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

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. 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. Theresa has lost her job and on impulse decides to "retire" to Southern France. She finds a lovely flat with a view of the harbor in Bellevue-Sur-Mer, a small village near Nice, where she meets a group of ex-pats, mostly British, who befriend her. But not all is perfect in paradise. A series of burglaries and a couple of vicious muggings have people on edge. Not to mention the family difficulties each of them has - cheating spouses, ungrateful children, dwindling funds, alcoholism, etc.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. The weak plot and horrible characters are not even saved by any sort of flowery pretty descriptive passages. There’s water and sunshine and restaurants and… Oh, there’s random foodporn which is also strictly non-French. I was so utterly confused about this. Again, way to immerse yourself in the setting… What an enjoyable way to spend a weekend afternoon by escaping to the Cote D'Azur, and to the charming town of Bellevue-sur-Mer, and its delightful array of residents. The initial descriptions of the town, conjured up pictures of a pretty town in Southern France, and I had the feeling the whole time that it felt like a similar sort of place to the one in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. And in fact that feeling didn't leave me during the book, and there was a similar storyline to the film, running through part of the book, which made me both smile and gasp. 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.

Celia Imrie: food is one of the great joys of life Celia Imrie: food is one of the great joys of life

The Olivier award-winning actor Celia Imrie, best known for film roles in Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, is about to publish her first novel, Not Quite Nice. A comic caper set among the tangled lives of a group of expats in a southern French village, Imrie wrote most of it at her own apartment in Nice. 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.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. 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… 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: When we use quite + a/an + adjective + noun it means the same as ‘a little or a lot but not completely’: Celia Imrie’s light and amusing style subsequently transports the reader to the glorious setting of the French Mediterranean Coast where Theresa relocates. The town of Bellevue-Sur-Mer seems to offer no end of culinary delights and new found friendships, all centred on a very eccentric and somewhat insular set of expats.

Not Quite Nice by Celia Imrie | Waterstones

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. Our members at Throston Reading Group, Hartlepool libraries, found this book enjoyable, some of the typical comments from our readers were: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… Once the hideaway of artists and writers, Bellevue-Sur-Mer is now home to the odd movie star and, as Theresa discovers, a close-knit set of expats. Settling to the gentle rhythm of the seaside, Theresa embraces her new-found friendships and freedom. But life is never as simple as it seems, and when skeletons fall out of several closets, Theresa starts to wonder if life on the French Riviera is quite as nice as it first appeared . 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 (Audio Download): Celia Imrie, Celia Imrie

I’m slightly wary of the generation below me, who I find rather money-obsessed. In my day we would never even have discussed the word inheritance, but it often comes up in conversation nowadays. I find the whole subject rather vulgar. I suppose that’s why it reared itself in the book. When we use quite with a gradable adjective or adverb, it usually means ‘a little, moderately but not very’. It has a similar meaning to ‘rather’ or ‘fairly’:make sure I am in France, where I can smell the scent of the sea, and taste the scrumptiousness of the cuisine. 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. The description of the town is excellent- the old buildings, narrow streets, steep steps, colours of flowers, contrast between sunlight and shadow. Familiar to anyone who has walked through a Mediterranean village, and to the author who dedicated the book “to my pals who brought me here to Nice, and to the city whose beauty saved and inspired me”. English–Arabic English–Bengali English–Catalan English–Czech English–Danish English–Hindi English–Korean English–Malay English–Marathi English–Russian English–Tamil English–Telugu English–Thai English–Turkish English–Ukrainian English–Vietnamese A gloriously funny and charming debut novel about the joys and challenges of living abroad from one of the nation's best-loved actresses