A Year in Provence

by Mayle, Peter

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Description

Vintage, 1991. faint spotting to cover o/w Fine. Who hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of chucking it all in and packing off to the south of France Provental 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 Provental 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 LubTron 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 Proventaux 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 From An account of the author's first frustrating but enlightening year in Provence opens with a memorable New Year's lunch and closes with an impromptu Christmas dinner. "In nimble prose, Mayle . . . captures the humorous aspects of visits to markets, vineyards and goat races, and hunting for mushrooms," said PW. Author tour. Illustrated. 1991 R18204-Random. Paperback. Very Good++.

Book summary

Mayle's humorous true story of his attempts to make a home for himself in the south of France after he fled his advertising job in England.