A Year in Provence
by Peter Mayle
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Book Summary Information
Author: Peter MayleEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1991-06-04
ISBN: 0679731148
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Vintage
Accessories:
- Franklin TRE-400 Seven Language European Translator/Dictionary
- The Complete National Geographic 110 Years
Book Reviews of A Year in Provence
Book Review: warm and funny - feels like a holiday in Provence!
Summary: 5 Stars
Recently, feeling a little tired and overworked, I decided to re-read Peter Mayle. I started at the beginning - with "A Year in Provence". When I read it for the first time, several years ago, I lived in Switzerland and read it rather as a companion to my frequent trips to France. Now I haven't been to Europe for a long time, so I needed to charge my batteries. I can recommend Mayle's books as a great remedy for any kind of boredom with everyday life and lack of vacation!
Mayle's book energizes in an amazing way. From the first chapters (the book is divided into months), although it started in unusually cold January, I felt like I were in Provence, breathing the fresh air smelling of herbs and lavender, lived in an old, stone house among the vines and at the feel of the Luberon mountains, and ate good food.
Inevitably, food, as a great part of the French experience, is an important subject in this book. Foie gras, wild mushrooms, truffles, wine, all kinds of game, restaurants from home-style ones serving fixed dinners and run by elderly couples, to the most elegant, with multi-course menus and champagne. I could read only about the food forever (luckily, Peter Mayle wrote more books about his life in Provence).
Mayle's gentle, but unfailing English sense of humor and his style make this book a lot less banal than it could be, considering the light subject. His masterful character creations, rendering his French neighbors and friends with accuracy, but also with almost loving tenderness (I am sure that even the people shown most critically and in the most funny way, like the grumpy farmer Massot, could not be offended by these descriptions), are superb.
The process of adjustment to the French way of life is painful, but it is sweetened by all the pleasures of living in the dream place, and it is great to feel the happiness of the narrator. I liked this light, cheerful book, when I was done, I immediately started "Toujours Provence", and, of course, began planning my French holiday...
Summary of A Year in Provence
A funny--and often hilarious--month-by-month account of the charms and frustrations of moving into an old French farmhouse in Provence and adapting to a very different way of life.Who hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of chucking it all in and packing off to the south of France? Proven?al cookbooks and guidebooks entice with provocatively fresh salads and azure skies, but is it really all C?tes-du-Rh?ne and fleur-de-lis? Author Peter Mayle answers that question with wit, warmth, and wicked candor in A Year in Provence, the chronicle of his own foray into Proven?al domesticity.
Beginning, appropriately enough, on New Year's Day with a divine luncheon in a quaint restaurant, Mayle sets the scene and pits his British sensibilities against it. "We had talked about it during the long gray winters and the damp green summers," he writes, "looked with an addict's longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting through the bedroom window." He describes in loving detail the charming, 200-year-old farmhouse at the base of the Lub?ron Mountains, its thick stone walls and well-tended vines, its wine cave and wells, its shade trees and swimming pool--its lack of central heating. Indeed, not 10 pages into the book, reality comes crashing into conflict with the idyll when the Mistral, that frigid wind that ravages the Rh?ne valley in winter, cracks the pipes, rips tiles from the roof, and tears a window from its hinges. And that's just January.
In prose that skips along lightly, Mayle records the highlights of each month, from the aberration of snow in February and the algae-filled swimming pool of March through the tourist invasions and unpredictable renovations of the summer months to a quiet Christmas alone. Throughout the book, he paints colorful portraits of his neighbors, the Proven?aux grocers and butchers and farmers who amuse, confuse, and befuddle him at every turn. A Year in Provence is part memoir, part homeowner's manual, part travelogue, and all charming fun. --L.A. Smith
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