Jake merely paid lip service.
Elspeth tried to put an end to his cheating.
Jake was too blinkeredly arrogant to notice.
So when a last-ditch but genteel Provençal attempt at romantic revival failed, Elspeth ditched both belief and gentility and took up a chain-saw instead, intent on some cure-or-kill pruning.
With results which surprised her as much as Jake.
With results which also surprised Chantal the cook, Marie the waitress, Soulange the hotel-owner’s teenage daughter ... and Soulange’s utterly delicious brothers, Jean-Pierre and Michel.
And then, more satisfactorily still, Soulange’s devastatingly capable, widowed father, Charles.
But WAS it kill? Or cure? Or merely a seasonal trimming, which would require repeating in a twelvemonth?
Jake, for one, could never be entirely sure, nor ever as complacent again.
Week #54’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge and one of my photos (which does make things harder not easier, I find)
Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover. Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book” http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html
Wow! Sounds like a great screenplay for a horror movie. You have me very curious; I can't tell if they all die or if they only get body parts cut off.
ReplyDeleteYour photo is super cool; there is a lot of inspiration in it somehow. Thanks!
Kathy M.
Actually Kathy, it was meant to be a metaphorical chain saw, but now you come to mention it ... but no, I don't think I can do buckets of blood. Glad you liked the photo.
DeleteWell, I thought I saw some unmetaphorically-trimmed tree branches reflected in the window.
ReplyDeleteExcellent blurb, Sandra. I'd love to see those utterly delicious brothers (scenery) and the devastatingly capable father (more my age). I enjoyed this a lot, and would happily buy the book.
K
Whatever Elspeth does, Jake earned it! Hopefully it's just a wake-up call, but I'd be buying this one to find out. Awesome cast of characters.
ReplyDeleteHaha--you won me over with "chain saw." Like Kathy, I took it literally at first and then decided it was something else entirely, which you confirmed above. We'll have to read the book to find out for certain, and I'm in.
ReplyDeleteThank you ladies - this was one which took its own direction and went somewhere unexpected, but certainly I should like to know more about Charles ...
ReplyDeleteMetaphorical or not, I loved the whole image of genteel Elspeth wielding that chain-saw. I would buy it if only to see exactly why and how all the pruning took place. And was Jake cheating with all those people? The entire wait-staff and Soulange and the brothers and Charles, too?? Ye gads! This is one I would buy and then read as soon as I got home.
ReplyDeleteTammy, I don't think Jake was that versatile - I suspect Elspeth took a leaf out of his books and tried some ... cross-pollination? (grafting?) for herself
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