I have to laugh at myself. When I picked up A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle at an Op shop (because, as usual, I liked the cover), I thought to myself, 'Mmm, a book set in Italy. I'll probably enjoy this. Plus, if the story is set in Italy Mum would also like to read this so can pass it on to her once I've finished.' I should have checked in with Mum first. Not because she would like to read this book too, she will, but she would have told me that Provence is in France, not Italy. Oh.
A Year in Provence is exactly what is sounds like, a memoir written by an English man who along with his wife, bought a 200-year old stone farmhouse with six acres of vineyards and a cherry orchard in Provence (France) then documented their first year.
The writer saw the funny side of everything with plenty of funny things happening throughout the year. Some people would find these events to be an irritation or worse, but to their credit Mayle and his wife chose to look on the bright side of life. I see on the author's blurb that he used to work in the advertising business as a copywriter, and this showed, with most of his anecdotes ending with a punchline.
January began with a fabulous New Year's Day lunch at a local restaurant under a sunny, blue sky, nothing at all like the cold, wet, grey English start to the year the author had been used to. Winter was looking good until the Mistral arrived, a wind that was so awful that it was considered to be an extenuating circumstance in violent crime trials. Again, showing my ignorance, I had thought that the Mistral was a warm, summery wind. It certainly sounds as if it should be. But after reading about the house pipes freezing after the wind arrived from its origin in Russia, I was prepared to concede that the Mistral is ferocious and brings with it desperately cold temperatures.
The first chapter also introduced the area, a variety of characters (otherwise known as the author's neighbours, builders and community), and a basic introduction to local customs.
February brought the arrival of a stone table, so big that it eventually took 12 men to lift it into its designated spot. However, after the table froze to the ground it stayed in the garden for months. The author and his wife discovered another local restaurant endorsed by their trusty Gault-Millau guide. In fact, the chapter for each month of the year included wonderful meals in restaurants and homes, fabulous food cooked at home with beautiful ingredients including truffles, many, many types of bread and cheese and a staggering variety of wines.
By summer, the house renovations were in full swing, but so were the visitors from England, determined to have a holiday in the sun despite the builder's rubble. The food they were eating was lighter according to the season, but the descriptions were equally delicious. The cherries were ripe and by September, so were the grapes. Choosing the right time to pick them was an agonising decision for the author's share farmer (the arrangement was that the land's owner paid for capital items and the share farmer did the work, with a share of the proceeds belonging to both), pick them too soon and the grapes' alcohol content would be too low, but if it rained before the grapes were picked the harvest would be ruined.
By the end of the year, the author was content that he and his wife's impulsive decision to buy and live in Provence had been the right one, they felt happy, relaxed and included in a community of characters, despite an unending stream of visitors from their old life in England, and while they weren't quite taking the fabulous things they were now eating for granted, they were well on their way to feeling settled in their new home.
I enjoyed my vicarious visit to Provence and would recommend this light-hearted book to anyone who dreams of uprooting their own life but who doesn't want to do it for real.
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