peter mayle - a year in provence

Peter Mayle

A YEAR IN PROVENCE


        New York. Vintage/Random House. 1991. 224 pages. paperback
            ISBN-10: 0679731148

reviewed by patrick killough

(1) biblio.com 12/17/2010

Would you recommend this book to other readers? Yes. * * * * *

review:

Are you shivering in your shoes this December? Well, don't go to southern France, Provence in December expecting to get warm. It is cold there too. Author Peter Mayle describes Provence as being a cold country with lots of sunshine. Lots of mistrals, too: the terrifying winds verging on hurricanes that can leave you housebound for days. Month after month, from January through December, author Peter Mayle, in A YEAR IN PROVENCE, relives the first year that he and his wife spent in an old farmhouse. They coped. They renovated. They hired temperamental workmen. They learned to discriminate among olive oils, wines, breads and the region's many restaurants. Carefully underwritten is A YEAR IN PROVENCE. A masterpiece in its unique way of understated story telling. And it makes you want to experience Provence, as my wife and I did last September.

"Understated" is not the word I would pick to describe the film/dvd of the same name based on the book and sequels. The book makes Provence magical. The movie clumsily showcases Provence as human but, as humans frequently are, as dull, self-absorbed and egotistical. Do not make my mistake of seeing the sub-par film before reading the superb book. I almost chose to skip A YEAR IN PROVENCE, the book. Thank the good Lord I did not. Enjoy!

-OOO-

http://www.biblio.com/books/372898357.html
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(2) lunch.com 12/17/2010

name of review: "Provence: ... a cold country with a high rate of sunshine"

rating: * * * * *

review:

"Provence has accurately been described as a cold country with a high rate of sunshine."

Who said that? Expatriate Englishman Peter Mayle in "November," the next to last chapter in his 1989 book A YEAR IN PROVENCE. Provence, of course, is in the South of France. At its warmest, including Nice and the Cote d'Azur, Provence is lapped by the waves of the Mediterranean Sea.

Peter Mayle and one of his three consecutive wives, I am not sure which one, perhaps # 3, Jennie, in November of their Year in Provence (the first of many) had been installed for ten months in an old stone house in the rural Luberon area. In the course of that year they had discovered that far more friends (or friends of friends) than they recalled having were hell bent on paying them visit after visit after visit. And all of them expected eternal summer or at least forever springtime. Well, visitors were not going to find warmth in November, though there would be plenty of (cold) sunshine.

Some visitors brought their own cars. Others expected to be picked up at an airport. Yet others wanted their hosts to spend day and night showing them the sights: olive presses, ball (boule) games on village greens, olive presses and five star restaurants. Some tourists could be independent. But everyone wanted to work on their tans. Meanwhile the Mayles ran a working household, full almost every day with noisy workmen.

Month by month Peter Mayle relives with us the ups and downs of making a hundreds of years old stone house livable. This year of living in Proence was a cross-cultural, tri-lingual (English, French, Provencal) undertaking somewhat paralleled in the American South when snowbirding Yankees confront workers named Bubba or Bubbette during hunting and fishing season. Patience, bilateral feints and tricks, and many a shared glass of first class wine soothe bruised egos, at least in Provence if not in North Carolina.

This book made my wife and me want to see Provence. And by golly we did, last September, cruising on the Rhone and Saone rivers. I would not call the weather warm, but it was mighty pleasant.

You should know that a film/DVD exists and is available on netflix.com inspired by and bearing the name A YEAR IN PROVENCE. It fleshes out the spare but masterly written sketches of Peter Mayle.

-OOO-

http://www.lunch.com/EditReview?id=1503359
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(3) bn.com 12/17/2010

title of review: "... the baking and eating of breads and pastries had been elevated to the status of a minor religion"

rating: * * * * *

review:

Posted 12/17/10:

Peter Mayle and his wife are shown doing a few things besides eating in Peter's 1989 book A YEAR IN PROVENCE. But of course eating is something that they and we do several times a day. And so a leisurely stroll with the Mayles down memory lane between January and December in a fairly remote rural area of ancient Provence, France does not move many paragraphs without a loving encounter with food and drink.

Thus a lengthy meditation on searches in the forest for edible mushrooms, with a keen eye out for les serpents, is succeeded by reflections on baked goods:

"Living in France had turned us into bakery addicts, and the business of choosing and buying our daily bread was a recurring pleasure." Visiting village after village in search of bread was an eye-opener. "After years of taking bread for granted, more or less as a standard commodity, it was like discovering a new food." There were "dense, chewy loaves." Some loaves "went stale in three hours" and on and on. No two bakeries produced quite the same products. Of the 17 bakeries in Cavaillon, outstanding was Chez Auzet. "At Chez Auzet, so they said, the baking and eating of breads and pastries had been elevated to the status of a minor religion" (Chapter - "October").

This passage is typical Mayle: calm, succinct, measured, concrete, loving. It the same voice that you hear describing local feasts, quirks of the search for truffles, blasting away with a variety of weapons in hunting season, harvesting grapes, getting building permits from and inspections done by French bureaucrats. This is a smoothly written book, as nourishing and refreshing as a fine red wine served with rabbit. -OOO-

recommended reading:

-- Decimus Magnus Ausonius - COMMEMORATIO PROFESSORUM GURGIDALENSIUM, dealing with the famous teachers of his native Bourdeaux whom he had known.

-- Julius Caesar - THE CONQUEST OF GAUL

-- James Fenimore Cooper - GLEANINGS IN FRANCE

-- Sir Walter Scott -- ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN

-- Ernst Wiechert - DAS EINFACHE LEBEN

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/A-Year-in-Provence/
Peter-Mayle/e/9780679731146/?itm=2&USRI=mayle
+-+a+year+in+provence

http://my.barnesandnoble.com/communityportal/
review.aspx?reviewid=1497056

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(4) amazon.com 12/18/2010

title of review: Worldlings love A YEAR IN PROVENCE unconditionally. Puritans squeal.

rating: * * * * *

review:

I am glad that I have read many of the reviews at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com of Peter Mayle's A YEAR IN PROVENCE. For my own first reading had me bowled over entirely by the style: its balance, selectivity, humor, openness to French and Provencal cultures. I challenge any reader to open this book at three different points at random and read two paragraphs. What do you find? A genial sameness of tone, unruffled, above the battle, cheerily detached: except from pleasures of the table and the palate.

The more critical reader reviews (relatively few though they were) helped me crystalize certain nagging criticisms I had of the book's substance -- as distinct from its glorious style.

I soon realized that reviewers who were hedonists and worldlings loved the book, while Puritan, unworldly readers were shocked and disappointed. A YEAR IN PROVENCE is a this-wordly, secular paean to good eating and drinking, inter-cultural effectiveness, enjoying the Rhone valley landscape and peoples while decrying the mistrals, insects, inept animal slaughter of local hunters and such like.

This is not a book in which locale and nature are seen as put there by God to lead men and women to Heaven. The book is all nature, zero super-nature. It points to nothing beyond hours of a pleasant day and months of a palate-teasing year.To the extent that there is an inner Puritan in our psyches, we say a prayer for the author and want to shout at him, "The Devil relishes truffles, mon cher!" What a poor, self-indulgent -- happy -- sinner!

But if there is within us an inner congenial Sir Walter Scott or palate-indulging G.K. Chesterton, we thank God for places like Luberon and people like Provencals. We can imagine Hilaire Belloc striding up the road to Peter Mayle's cottage happily "bellowing for beer." Like Shakespeare, we want a world of "cakes and ale."

Incarnationist Christians thank God for making a world easy for us to love and to find Him everywhere. Puritans complain that the world is so tempting all by itself that we never want to lift our eyes to its Maker.

A YEAR IN PROVENCE is a grand defense of hedonistic this-worldliness. Which doesn't stop anyone's eyes from looking for and finding God.

-OOO-

tags: provence, peter mayle, fantasy travelog, truffles, boule, mushrooms, breads, wines, provencal language

http://www.amazon.com/Year-Provence-Peter-Mayle/
dp/0679731148/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=
1292320993&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/ABABCND8BHUXC/
ref=cm_pdp_rev_title_1?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview
#RK4NIA0K1Y2AQ
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(5) epinions.com 12/8/2010

Review Title: A perfectly written, worldly book. Earth at its seductive best.

Product Rating: * * * *

PROS: Low-key, elegant writing, steady detached. A landscape dotted with memorable people foods and drinks.

CONS: Utterly this-worldly and hedonistic. Attempts little, achieves it all. Harsh on Londoners and Parisians.

BOTTOM LINE: Book's format, author's limited goal and perfect style tempt you to forgive its totally self-centered, hedonistic view of France's Rhone Valley and Provence. Heaven for gourmets. Hell for puritans.

aohcapablanca's Full Review:

Peter Mayle's 1989 cross-cultural travel memoir A YEAR IN PROVENCE has begotten at least two films. The first one I saw before I read the book, the second afterwards:

-- "A Year in Provence," 2003, available in two DVD discs from netflix.com

and

-- "A Good Year," 2006, also available via netflix.

If you start with either one of the two DVDs or with the book, you will likely choose to continue on to the others.

"A Good Year," starring Russell Crowe, takes little from Peter Mayle's text beyond atmospherics. "A Year in Provence," the film, transplants the author's text from highly selective Never-Never Land to grittier, sometimes boring reality.

Retired English media executive Peter Sayles and one of his three wives (it is not clear which, since she is never named) decamp from London for southern France where they have bought an ancient stone house. Through twelve unnumbered chapters beginning with January and ending with December, Mr Mayle shares with us a very few selected experiences from A YEAR IN PROVENCE. Part travelogue, part tour of Provence's best little-known restaurants, bakeries and butcher shops, part detached, amused, cross-cultural amateur anthropologist's showcasing of exotic Provencal natives and pesky house guests and summer tourists from outside the Valley of the Rhone River, A YEAR IN PROVENCE is perfectly structured, presented and told.

The local arts of hunting for truffles, mushrooms and wild animals are lovingly detailed. Depending on the weather, author and wife can take in a village goat race, a lawn bowl (boule) competition or moan about highway congestion. They own a vineyard and watch in fascination as local farmers tend it for them. They have a neighbor who will stop at nothing to scare German tourists away from State-owned forest land abutting his own farm.

Much more time than the Mayles had anticipated goes to writing contracts with local pavers, stone masons, plumbers, carpenters and other workmen to tear out walls and winterize their home. That was the easy part. Persuading laborers to show up when they promise is a cross-cultural challenge of epic dimensions. A humorous high point is thei Mayles' cunning invitation to the wives of all those men working on their home to a Christmas party to celebrate completion. Without that ploy, they and readers might waiting to this day for state of the art central heating.

For fun, you might turn to the scores of reviews of A YEAR IN PROVENCE on-line at amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. The vast majority give 5 and 4 star ratings. But then read the 1, 2 and 3 star ratings as well. Have these people read the same book?

Curiously, yes.

Almost every reader is struck by the perfect marriage of style and content. That, plus vivid descriptions of wind storms, rain, blizzards, country sounds, food, drink and eccentric Provencal neighbors, guarantee a high rating. Call those reviewers uncritical hedonists. By contrast, in a small number of reviewers there is downright dislike of the author for being wealthy, snobbish, not working, self-centered, not naming his wife of the moment, detached, supercilious and even contemptuous of everyone but himself. Furthermore, the book is worldly, maybe even ungodly. Peter Mayle is a rogue, a fallen angel. Color those reviewers puritans.

The bottom line is that Peter Mayle's world view, or at least such little of it as he chooses to share with readers, is for a fact utterly this worldly. A YEAR IN PROVENCE is an unending paean to the gentle joys of this good earth, or at least those found in southern France. There is no time for hair shirts, fasts, churches, Masses, litanies or religious processions except as culture indicators.

I like to think of myself as a Christian who loves both this world and yearns as well for the one beyond it. An Incarnationalist who thanks God for creation: for friends, health, good food, a warm fire. It is tempting to say that this is all God wants us to know and have, though I believe otherwise. But if ever there was a strong defense of this world as be all and end all, it is A YEAR IN PROVENCE. Very, very well done.

You yourself may have no trouble seeing the finger of God writing in Provence. But you will receive no help from Peter Mayle.

Nonetheless, Incarnationalist Christians need not fear for their salvation if they dare to read A YEAR IN PROVENCE. I can well imagine stout English Catholics like G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc and Evelyn Waugh strolling happily up the hill at the end of a long day's hike. Belloc is "bellowing for beer" and all three will be made welcome and enjoy the good cheer and viands at the Mayles's cottage.

This wider reality beyond A YEAR IN PROVENCE is the glorious little world of Shakespeare's clash between puritan judgmentalism and human love of food and drink. As Sir Toby asks:

Art any more than a steward? Dost thou think because thou
art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?

(Twelfth Night Act 2, scene 3, 114–124)

- OOO-

Thank you, Pestyside, for making this not so very old "classic" reviewable by epinionators like me.

Recommended: Yes.

http://www99.epinions.com/reviews/Peter_Mayle_A_Year_in_Provence_epi
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ADDITIONAL:

TWO FILMS:

(I.)

http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/A-Year-in-Provence/60030576?strackid=
1f6f58918e079d24_0_srl&strkid=797716364_0_0&trkid=222336

A Year in Provence

1993
NR
2 discs

This adaptation of Peter Mayle's true-life best-seller chronicles the first year he and his wife (played by John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan) spent in an old French farmhouse after quitting the London rat race. Amid the gastronomical splendors, the couple also had to make hilarious adjustments to the idiosyncrasies of life in France. Originally produced for the A&E cable channel, the volumes are split according to the year's seasons.
Cast:
John Thaw, Lindsay Duncan, Gabrielle Anwar, Jean-Pierre Delage
Genres:
Television, TV Miniseries, United Kingdom, British TV, British TV Dramas, TV Comedies, TV Sitcoms, Foreign Regions
Format:
DVD

(II.)

http://movies.netflix.com/Search?oq=&ac_posn=&v1=a+good+year
&search_submit=

A Good Year
2006
PG-13
114 minutes

Oscar winner Ridley Scott directs this adaptation of Peter Mayle's best-selling novel, following the romantic misadventures of an Englishman who inherits a vineyard from his uncle in Provence, France. When failed banker Max Skinner (Russell Crowe) moves abroad to accept what his late uncle (Albert Finney) left him, he meets a beautiful French woman (Marion Cotillard), along with an American (Abbie Cornish) who claims to be his long-lost cousin.

Cast:
    Russell Crowe, Albert Finney, Isabelle Candelier, Abbie Cornish, Freddie Highmore, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hollander, Archie Panjabi
Director:
    Ridley Scott
Genres:
    Drama, Dramas Based on the Book, Romantic Dramas, Dramas Based on Contemporary Literature, Fox Home Entertainment, Wine & Beverage Appreciation, Food & Wine, Food Stories
This movie is:
    Sentimental, Romantic
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file: mayle_provence

http://www.patrickkillough.com/books/mayle_provence.html