A Year in Provence - Peter Mayle

A Year in Provence

By Peter Mayle

  • Release Date: 1990-04-28
  • Genre: Travel in Europe
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 265 Ratings

Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs.

He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glorious regional cuisine. A Year in Provence transports us into all the earthy pleasures of Provençal life and lets us live vicariously at a tempo governed by seasons, not by days.

Reviews

  • A Year in Provence

    5
    By Rich Schwartz
    This is an absolutely delightful and astonishingly well-written series of anecdotes about life in rural Provence and the characters who populate it. I can’t imagine a more entertaining introduction to this colorful region.

  • Englishman abroad

    3
    By Amator Librorum
    Less a book about southern France and more about the self deprecating reserve of a cosmopolitan Englishman abroad, pitted against the earthy and rustic hi jinx of the Gallic peasantry. It's an age old trope, colonialist meets local color, better exploited by Waugh or Greene or Orwell, but Mayle is a nice stylist who de-centers himself and foregrounds the memorable characters of the Vaucluse. The quiddity of the region, the Mistral blowing across shriveled vineyards, the endless glasses of pastis, the sumptuously slow and hot summer afternoons, the quaint customs of Boule and mushroom gathering, make me want to travel to Provence.

  • Made me hungry:)

    5
    By Desinergrl
    The story is so deliciously detailed! I could literally taste the elaborate five course meals and when i looked up from my book i was surprised that i wasnt in provence!

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