Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
WHEN award-winning journalist and first-time novelist Julia Stuart was browsing at The Bookcase in Budaiya last week, she was stunned to see her comic debut sitting on the shelf.
“I had only looked under the S’s for a laugh. When I saw two copies of the book I couldn’t believe it!” she said.
But Julia – who moved to Bahrain three weeks ago – has already seen her book The Matchmaker of Perigord emerge in such far-flung reaches as Lithuania, and, translated into five languages.
Released a few months ago this affectionate, funny tale of life and love in rural
Newspaper reviewers have raved and there is already talk of a sequel and a film.
Made up of wonderful three-dimensional eccentrics whose search for love leads to a host of farcical trysts, The Matchmaker of Perigord is at times whimsical and at others poignant.
“I wanted people to be moved by the book, to feel some emotion,” explained Julia. “You want to take your reader on a journey, land them safely to shore and think that it was worth it when they get there.”
Set in the hamlet of Amour-Sur-Belle in the Perigord Vert region of the Dordogne, the un-charming village is home to a bizarre weather system, pigeons who forget how to fly, and an ageing population of just 33.
Among them is Guillaume Ladoucette, the local barber who is forced to close his business due to the advancing age and baldness of the local population.
As the barber and ‘lunar gardener’ flops around in his ‘supermarket leather sandals,’ bemoaning the lack of hair in the village, he is inspired to reopen as a dating agency in an effort to bring some romance to the village.
Guillaume’s first customer is the dentist Yves Léveque, who he sets up with the assistant ambulant fishmonger and ‘mushroom poisoner’ – Sandrine Fournier.
Soon all the single villagers are on Guillaume’s books looking for mates and pursuing his advice: “Love is like a good cassoulet, it needs time and determination. Some bits are delicious while others might be a bit rancid and make you wince.”
Peppered with extraordinary local customs that are too odd to be untrue, long-standing feuds and descriptions of the area that are so vivid you can almost smell the aroma of ripe truffles, the book is a gourmet treat.
Even if you’re not a Francophile The Matchmaker of Perigord will leave you lusting after all things Gallic.
Julia started writing the novel two summers ago, inspired by a story she read in a magazine about the fate of a barber whose clients were afflicted by alopecia.
After a lifelong love affair with France, she decided to set the novel in a small hamlet where her journalist husband’s relatives lived. The first three chapters secured her a publishing deal. After writing half the novel in the evenings after work and on weekends, she headed to France to finish it.
“I lived in a little farmhouse in Perigord for three months and I adored it. It was one of the happiest periods of my life,” she said.
In the evenings and on weekends she would hunt out suitable locations for her characters’ dates, in the process finding a troglodyte cave, a tumble-down chateau, a truffle restaurant where she paid an eye-watering €161 for a truffle meal, a donkey fair and a bonfire-jumping fete.
She would interview locals who willingly shared their childhood memories, customs and anecdotes.
“Sometimes I would pop into my octogenarian neighbour’s house who always wore a beret and looked so French he could have been planted by the tourism board,” she said.
“A retired school teacher told me about a custom of ironing ducks. They would put a dish cloth over the dead duck and iron them so that their feathers would come out easily.”
Julia started her writing career as a local newspaper reporter, later graduating to The Independent and Independent on Sunday where she was to remain for eight years.
She won the Amnesty International award for journalism for her eyewitness account of a Texas execution.
But she also has a passion for the preposterous.
“Over the years I’ve also done lots of high-caper stuff,” she explained. “I’ve dressed up as the back-end of a pantomime horse, visited England’s most haunted village to look for ghosts and was a ‘glamorous’ assistant helping a man spin his plates at the end of a peer.”
Surprisingly it was never her intention to write a novel. However, a collection of short stories secured an agent who persuaded her to work on one.
“When I started writing short stories I didn’t tell anyone because I was embarrassed and didn’t want people to think that I had ideas above my station,” she revealed. “When I got the book deal it was quite scary because suddenly I had to write a book and get everything right.”
Shortly after the publication of The Matchmaker of Perigord she married her husband, Digby, who moved to Bahrain in May.
Fuelled by love she started the research for her second novel and wrote the synopsis while on her honeymoon. “I was so happy and relaxed and all the creative juices were flowing,” she explained. Since arriving in Bahrain her “antennae are out and twitching” and she said she would love to set a book in the kingdom.
