"Flagey in Autumn" by Simon Mundy

 An ensemble novel, much like the Scotland Street series of Alexanderr McCall Smith, such as 44, Scotland Street (2005) and its sequels such as Espresso Tales (2005), Love Over Scotland (2006), The World According to Bertie (2007) and The Unbearable Lightness of Scones (2008).

Flagey in Autumn (and its sequels) is about the customers of the Cafe Franck on Place Flagey in Brussels. It starts on a Saturday and ends on the following Saturday. The first few sections are inevitably crowded with details: we are meeting most of the cast in a few pages. I resorted to making notes. But by the time Sunday had arrived, I was confident I knew who was who. From then on, as the plot lines wove and intersected, I enjoyed the ride.

It was an entertaining book with some nice character development. I look forward to meeting the cast again in the sequels, Flagey in Winter and Flagey in Spring. 

Selected quotes:

• "To go back to Derby was the sort of slow death reserved for spinsters in a Victorian novel." (Saturday: Catrina mulls)
• "She thought of herself as a bundle of bones with random splatterings of flesh, as though they had been slapped on by a disinterested sculptor." (Saturday: Oops)
• "Fidel could talk about football – it was incumbent to his image as an intellectual with his instincts still rooted in the people – but the actual watching of a game truly horrified him" (Sunday: Above and Below)
• "The professor bellowed. It was the sound of an enraged intellect or, as his grinning colleague Wilfred Tinnemans decided two doors down, the sound an ox makes when the cowman slips a tight rubber ring round its balls. The meeting was going to be a lot of fun." (Monday: Elise considers)
• "It was a relief not to have a lover who, like the French girls, knew everything about love-making and marked him out of ten while he put his clothes on." (Wednesday: Considerations)
• "She was not a woman to walk on air. There was a slight lack of co-ordination about her movements that suggested that, had she tried to walk on air, she would have fallen off." (Wednesday: New jobs)
• "He looked like an elderly tomcat who had found an endless supply of cream." (Thursday: Late lecture)
• "Those with nothing more pressing to do: foreigners between meetings, writers between pages, artists between brush strokes or pausing in the search for random objects to install. And students." (Thursday: Ruptures in paradise)
• “Politics is not about great plans; it is about great management of the unexpected which makes everyone think you had great plans” (Friday: No time for contemplation)

July 2026; 256 pages in the print version

Published in April 2015 by Hay Press

I read the kindle version

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

Also by Simon Mundy and reviewed in this blog: 

• The Fragile Land: a new take on the Arthurian legend

Synopsis: spoiler alert

Dutch Saskia bumps into English Catrina, causing her to spill tea on Spanish Mercedes. Because she refuses to apologise, barista Patrice bans her from the cafe. He then turns his attention to Catrina and that night they will end up in his bed. Fidel, a Professor of rhetoric, watches ... and recognises Elise, another cafe worker, from the bar in the jazz club on Friday night. Fidel and Elise will also start an affair that night after he discovers that she has moved in to the flat below his.

Saskia has lunch in another cafe. Leaving it, she sees Catina and Patrice across the square. They converge with hostile intentions but collide with bystander fat Louise, knocking her over. Saskia helps Louise back to her flat and spontaneously embarks upon her first lesbian experience.

Esko, a Finnish MEP, goes to a film festival and leaves with French film star Amelie. They are photographed kissing. By Tuesday they are in the papers and Amelie is besieged by reporters inside Esko's flat. Esko's wife Rikka, a Finnish MP in Helsinki, dumps him over the phone.

Mariana, Esko's parliamentary assistant, is in love with him and angry about his affair with Amelie. She tries to seduce Esko but fails. He takes her to lunch and gives her a job working with Writers Against Injustice.

Fidel's office at the university has been tidied and painted. He is furious. Elise persuades him to start the Utterly Free University, where lectures will be online and available via podcast, to be funded by advertising. He hates new technology but also hates lecturing in person so he resigns.

Catrina, who is yet another parliamentary assistant, hates her Tory boss so she asks a Welsh Nationalist Green MEP for a job ... and gets it.

Mercedes is turned down for a job with an Italian lobbying company and instead takes a job with Nikita, the Russian owner of an art gallery.

Agnistina is looking for Flamand in the cafe but doesn't see him because he is hidden behind fat Louise. When they finally meet again, each thinks the other jilted them. The situation is resolved when Patrice shows them what happened on the cafe's CCTV.

Esko is elected head of his parliamentary group because of the way he has successfully dealt with the media in the last week.