Instructions for Visitors: Life and Love in a French Town
by Helen Stevenson
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Description
If you are lucky enough to find your place, you should never actually live in it, never make it your home. And never live with the man you think you cannot live without. Le Village is a small town at the southwestern-most tip of France. Here a young Englishwoman fell in love with France, the French and one Frenchman in particular. In her seductive, lyrical and witty memoir Helen Stevenson writes about life in Le Village, not as an expat, but as someone adopted by her neighbours as one of show more their own. By Stefan, the Maoist tennis fanatic, who lives off his lover in solidarity with the unemployed; by Gigi, the chic Parisian who dresses her ex-lovers' girlfriends from the stock of her exquisite boutique; and by Luc, the crumpled cowboy painter and part-time dentist, who, overcoming an aversion to blondes, takes the Englishwoman up to his remote mas, shows her his paintings and teaches her to ride. Describing the colour and light of the landscape with lyrical intensity, and savouring the languid and sexy flavour of the Mediterranean lifestyle, Helen Stevenson lays bare a romantic but potentially disastrous love affair with the man 'who seems like the only man alive to me, the one with the halo round his head in a crowd, if I should ever see him in a crowd'. INSTRUCTIONS FOR VISITORS may start as an objective guide for tenants arriving at her village house, but it ends as a very personal revelation of how difficult it can be to transplant oneself into someone else's country, someone else's culture, someone else's heart. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Subtitle: Life and Love in a French Town. This is a memoir of the author’s experiences as a young British expatriate living in a village near the Spanish border.
Her writing is very atmospheric and I really felt as if I were in the French countryside. I loved the way she described certain people or scenes: “ …she had the face of someone put together by a police artist.” But I have to admit I was somewhat frustrated by her head-over-heels feeling for Luc – cowboy, painter, dentist and lothario. He was bad news from the beginning and I never understood the attraction for her. Still it was a charming read and it made me want to experience this kind of village life for myself.
Her writing is very atmospheric and I really felt as if I were in the French countryside. I loved the way she described certain people or scenes: “ …she had the face of someone put together by a police artist.” But I have to admit I was somewhat frustrated by her head-over-heels feeling for Luc – cowboy, painter, dentist and lothario. He was bad news from the beginning and I never understood the attraction for her. Still it was a charming read and it made me want to experience this kind of village life for myself.
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Author Information
10+ Works 168 Members
Helen Stevenson grew up in South Yorkshire and studied modern languages at Oxford. She is a translator. She lives in London, England.
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Helen Stevenson; Stefan; Luc; Gigi
- Important places
- France (southwest); Languedoc, France
Classifications
- Genres
- Travel, Biography & Memoir, Fiction and Literature, Literature Studies and Criticism
- DDC/MDS
- 809 — Literature & rhetoric Literature, rhetoric & criticism History, description, critical appraisal of more than two literatures
- LCC
- DC29.3 .S74 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania France – Andorra – Monaco History of France Description and travel
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 125
- Popularity
- 260,063
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.06)
- Languages
- Dutch, English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 1
