Whimsical and diverting for readers who are fortunate enough to open the pages and live among the many eccentric and very French villagers of Amour-sur-Belle, a village that aspires to be a town but is so ugly even the English refuse to live there. Julia Stuart has created a gentle fairy tale of a novel for adults who have not totally set aside their childhood imaginations.

At first we readers do not know that the villagers are lovesick almost to every one of its 32 inhabitants. In fact, very little love seems to go around Love-on-the-Belle-River. Instead rivalries, jealousies, and suspicions have prevented seeds of affection from sprouting almost everywhere. It takes a self-realization in Guillame Ladoucette's life to provide the good people of the village an opportunity to correct that horrible circumstance. Guillame faces the fact that, as the town's barber, he is in a dead end job, in spite of his superb qualifications and talents. All his customers are old and balding. Besides, a nouveau barber in the nearby town has siphoned customers away.

What to do? He decides to become a matchmaker and reintroduce love and companionship into the lonely lives of his fellow villagers. What follows is why you must allow yourself to shed inhibitions and laugh out loud, even if you're obliged to be reading in public. By the end, you will have bubbled over with sufficient chuckles so that perhaps you will have been beguiled into attempting a perfectly delicious cassoulet yourself.

I recommend this novel to all who still remember how to read for pleasure alone. Perhaps still the best reason to justify comfortable idleness spent in the presence of an open book. ( )

Guillaume Ladoucette is a barber in his small village in southern France. When he realizes his clientele are growing older and losing their hair, he must change professions. He decides to become a matchmaker.
This is a charming story full of eccentric but lovable characters. The writing style is perfect for the story though the repetition can be a little annoying after a while. If you like quirky tales, this is a book for you. ( )

When we had the book club discussion about Matchmaker, a lot of people complained about the almost-bludgeoning repetitiveness of the author's description, and the intense, almost obsessive focus that was given to painfully minute details. Though others complained, I felt that this endless repetition and obsessive focus on the minute was necessary as a way of showing the reader, bludgeoning them with it if need be, that these villagers' lives are completely and utterly joyless, repetitive, and minute. It may be the late 80s in the outside world, but in Amour-sur-Belle it is the 1940s, and they've been stuck there, isolated from the outside world, without hope, without love, without beauty, in a mind-numbing cycle of purposeless repetition. Once we've been flooded with all this microscopic inanity, we can fully understand the earth-shaking changes that will come to the village of Amour-sur-Belle. All the village's inhabitants have been spinning their wheels, going nowhere, for an entire lifetime; how much joy there will be when they are finally allowed to move forward! Oh how relieved we as readers are when something new finally starts happening and characters finally start reaching beyond their prescribed comfort zones. Would we be nearly so relieved, so happy for the villagers, if we didn't have as good of an idea of the depressing repetition of their lives to begin with?

If I could compare this book to a type of poem, I would say that it is a very large sestina, and at regular intervals we see the same details, the same snippets of conversation or description pop up, but in different patterns, and at the end there's a cathartic tercet that ties everything neatly together and finally gives the reader closure. It's like a highly sophisticated French Groundhog's Day, except with Guillaume Ladoucette and a chicken instead of Bill Murray and a groundhog.

About the chicken: I think that the reason it makes him smile at the end is because finally, FINALLY, he has something bigger and better in his life to think about than that cursed chicken and her inconvenient eggs. He no longer sleeps like a dead man, his hands stiffly at his sides, like a man already in his coffin, he sleeps like a man who is finally living. And that damned chicken doesn't matter with the love of his life finally at his side. ( )

Cosa succede in un rissoso paesino francese se il barbiere apre un'agenzia di cuori solitari?

Monsieur Ladoucette scoprì la sua vocazione al taglio in tenera età, quando, impadronitosi di un paio di forbici, iniziò a tagliare tutto ciò che gli capitava a tiro. Gli studi da barbiere furono una conseguenza naturale e non stupì più di tanto che si diplomasse con il massimo dei voti. Dopo un apprendistato presso un grande maestro, con i risparmi riuscì ad aprire una bottega tutta sua, nel paesino natale di Amour-sur-Belle.
Il tempo passa, ma pare che il barbiere non vi si sappia adeguare: così quando la concorrenza di un collega nel paesino vicino gli ruba tutti i clienti, si decide a convertire la sua attività in un'agenzia per single.
Nonostante il paesino conti ufficialmente 33 anime, poco alla volta iniziano ad arrivare i clienti: peccato che lui stesso non sia un bell'esempio. Innamorato fin dalle elementari della bella Emilie, non è mai riuscito a rivelarle i propri sentimenti e quindi a scoprire di essere pure ricambiato.
Tra disavventure al limite dell'assurdo, i cuori solitari di Amour-sur-Belle non saranno più tali e l'amore, come sempre, trionferà.

Con una prosa scorrevole, l'autrice Julia Stuart narra una storia frizzante e divertente, ricca di personaggi memorabili e caratteristici.
Il panettiere compagno di pesca di Monsieur Ladoucette, con cui fa a gara per il cestino del pranzo più luculliano.
La madre del barbiere, completamente svampita, che se ne va in giro per il paese seguita da uno stormo di piccioni che ha disimparato a volare.
L'avvelenatrice fungina, che per vendetta provocò la morte del padre dell'amante - ma la storia non è così semplice come pare.
Il farmacista che creò scandalo per essere diventato vegetariano e che scomparve all'improvviso durante il "mini-tornado" del 1999.
La doccia pubblica, installata per evitare lo spreco di acqua delle vasche da bagno in un'estate particolarmente asciutta.
Farsi catturare dal romanzo è semplice: più difficle sarà riuscire a staccarsene prima dell'ultima pagina: un gioiello.
( )

I liked her second book better but this book was still cleverly written and fun to read. ( )