The Woman with the Bouquet / Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt 217 p.

A collection of 5 short stories, I was attracted to this because they were described as 'fairy-tale-like.' After reading them, I wouldn't describe them that way - they weren't Isak Dinesen - but I did like them very much. Set in France and Belgium, they are essentially stories about love and the misunderstandings that go with it. There are dark events in the stories, but the tone is humorous and happy, somehow. I smiled a lot as I was reading this - how's that for an evaluation? My favorite story, Trashy Reading, includes a stuffy bachelor who will read only non-fiction until he is sucked in by a lowbrow American thriller. A clever, funny defense of genre fiction of all stripes...or is it?