- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (3 Jun 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140279334
- ISBN-13: 978-0140279337
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 12.4 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 658,075 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Who hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frustratingFriday, 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
Product Description
In this work for armchair and actual travellers alike, the author records the events of a year in Provence, from foie gras and burst pipes in January, through the Tour de France preparations, the grape "vendange" and the mushroom season, to the Christmas gastronomic splurge.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
I had heard stories about the French v English but the way it is told by Peter Mayle in A Year in Provence makes me want to experience it myself.I found the book very funny,interesting and even educational.Iam now headed in the direction of the other two.More More More Plea.....se Peter Mayle
Format:Paperback
This is a pleasant, light read, ideal for holiday dreaming. The author has done well fleshing out the local characters and manners. My one criticism, which is slight, is that the Mayles don't get out much. The action in the book is divided between the remodelling of their home, and eating in restaurants. At the very end, the author acknowledges that much more goes on in Provence, but they just couldn't manage it that year. For a grittier book in the same vein, try "Driving Over Lemons." I found it a bit more satisfying.
Format:Paperback
I couldn't put this book down! An easy read but highly enjoyable, it succeeds in filling your imagination with wonderous images of a balmy holiday in Provence with copious amounts of food and wine! I am now spending my time trying to persuade my husband to holiday in Provence so rich were the descriptions of the life and people of the area. Well worth a read.
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