A MIDLIFE CRISIS ON THE FRENCH RIVIERA

Ladyfingers: a novel by Delorys Welch-Tyson

Review of Ladyfingers: A Novel

“Black folks on the French Riviera?  Get outta here!  The French Riviera is a location for F. Scott Fitzgerald characters, not Terry McMillan people,” most would probably think.

 Well, let me tell you,  us American colored folks have been living down there on the coast as well as in Paris. 

That’s how I got here myself. 

Yours truly was inspired to explore the South of France by one of my favourite American authors, James Baldwin.  Not only did he live in Paris, but he spent most of his adult life until his death in Saint Paul de Vence, on the French Riviera.  Then there was black American  entertainer Bobby Short.  There were the jazz impresarios, George and Joyce Wein, the founders of the Nice Jazz Festival who had secondary residences in Vence. Let’s not forget the fact that Josephine Baker spent her last years with her Rainbow Tribe in Roquebrunne, on the French Riviera.  Among many others who I won’t name out of respect for their privacy, I will add Miss Tina Turner, the author of Ladyfingers, Delorys Welch-Tyson as well as yours truly.

The author Delorys Welch-Tyson has taken characters usually associated with F. Scott Fitzgerald and paralleled their lives with characters you might find in a Terry McMillan novel to create hilarious midlife crisis tales of American women living on the French Riviera.

Basically, the story is that a famous American filmmaker (no…it isn’t Spike Lee) is planning a wedding banquet at the Negresco Hotel on the French Riviera.  A ban of East Somarians plan to kidnap the American guests in order to demand ransom for their Anti-Sanction Society rebel organization.  The kidnapping plan is foiled due to the lack of strategic planning and general confusion which seemed to prevail during the post 9/11 Bush Administration.

Then there's the internationally famous Pop Diva (hints of Diana Ross, maybe?) in love with both a sadistic Belgian Mime and a manipulative record mogul.  But that a whole 'nother  parallel story!

This novel is written as humour and political satire

 Is the story plausible? Yes.  Absolutely, yes!

authro, Delorys Welch Tyson

 Believable?  No.