A Year in Provence

A Year in Provence
by Peter Mayle

A Year in Provence
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Book Summary Information

Author: Peter Mayle
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1991-06-04
ISBN: 0679731148
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Vintage
Accessories:

Book Reviews of A Year in Provence

Book Review: a rich year
Summary: 5 Stars

If a friend has told you of this book, he or she has probably said that you'd love it. Your friend is right; read this book. It's a well-written, amusing, humorous and affectionate description of a fascinating region and its people.

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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