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Loading... A Year in Provenceby Peter Mayle
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. made for TV series of the book - vhs boxed set (6 hours) LBroudy | Mar 16, 2009 |  1   This book made me hungry. The descriptions of the food that the author and his wife were eating in their jaunts around the Luberon reminded me once again of how much I’d like to visit France. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the local color, and read with appreciation the local’s attitude toward the hoards that descend upon them in the summer (we know a bit about that up here in Maine). The recurring story of the contractors was also a delight. Despite the fact that these contractors were clearly working on a Provencal schedule, I detected a certain similarity to stories of contractors I’ve heard from friends here. It’s reassuring to see that some things never change, no matter where you go. In fact, I think the beauty of this book is that it describes a region from a home perspective (even if it is fairly new), instead of the perspective of someone from away who will go away again, which is the norm for most travel writing. And it’s this hominess that makes me want to visit this place. Lovely book. (  )megaelim | Jan 9, 2009 | 2 He writes some really interesting and funny books about Southern France. He had a series on PBS a number of years ago. This is the one I read, but there are many others. ( )beebeereads | Nov 15, 2008 | Mayle's vision of Provence is pure fantasy. It's true, the details of food and weather and habits are accurate, but it rings of 19th century English colonial patriarchy. The French "peasants" are portrayed like happy go lucky children living in a Romanticized garden of Eden uncorrupted by the real world of London and Paris. Mayle is the benevolent Patriarch in contrast to the towns cast of cartoonish personalities (it's no accident this book was adapted to a comedic TV series). If it was a novel at least there would be a plot, but instead it's a faux anthropological survey with Mayle studying the life and habits of local natives and imparting information for those back home who wish to follow his colonial ambitions (Mayle was in advertising). Its been said travel writing is stuck in the 19th century and this is a prime example of the genre with a modern voice. The book has been very popular - it really is very enjoyable at a certain level - but believing the fantasy and traveling there expecting a similar experience is being complicit in a form of modern day colonialism. Mayle apparently has since left Provence because the town changed - one can only imagine why. With that said I enjoyed reading about Provence and plan to read Alphonse Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin or Letters from My Windmill published in 1869 - it is beloved in France and offers perhaps an authentic French perspective on the region just before modernization. --Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd (  )Stbalbach | Sep 10, 2008 | Very amusing journey of Peter Mayle and his wife trying to adjust to living in Provence with all of its quirkiness and routine. I enjoyed this book. ( )robynkit | Aug 23, 2008 | 0.035 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0679731148, Paperback)Who hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of chucking it all in and packing off to the south of France? Provençal cookbooks and guidebooks entice with provocatively fresh salads and azure skies, but is it really all Côtes-du-Rhône 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 Provençal 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 Lubéron 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 Rhône 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 Provençaux 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 (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:09 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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