An ambitious family of four from the States decides to take a
summer in Provence in order to experience the joys of the ages-old
artistic community. Eco-feminist art critic Vivian Hart is badly in
need of a kick start to her career and a change of scenery. Her
husband Richard, a stock photographer, yearns to purify his art of
the curse of prettiness. Their golden opportunity arrives in the
form of a classified ad in the New York Review of Books:
"Ideal sabbatical retreat in the south of France…" However,
what they find is not exactly the quiet countryside they had seen
on PBS --- instead, it's a wildly commercialized and traffic-choked
territory in which they land. FOOL'S GOLD is a funny satire on
greed and pretensions, on the rush for cold hard cash in the name
of art. Jane S. Smith's first novel is very entertaining.

Bored to tears, their kids end up selling the junky stuff they find
sequestered at the bottom of a nearby pond. When these artifacts
show up on the area's flea market stages, the natives get restless
and start searching for the source of what ends up being expensive
jewelry. This is not the story that a Peter Mayles book expects you
to hear from the land of vineyards and Van Gogh inspirations. Smith
smartly couches what could be an angry diatribe about American
greed and misplaced ambition inside a smart and goofy storyline
that reads like an Algonquin roundtable satire. The characters are
well-wrought, the plot moves along quickly --- this should have
been published in the summer because it would be a great beach
read.

Nonetheless, in any season, FOOL'S GOLD denies the inclination of
its title with a rousing and romping story. This is mid-list
gold.