Mirabelle Pickers, The (Paperback)

Paperback. Jacques Reda chooses the height of the plum-picking season to revisit - on an old motorbike - his home town in Lorraine, north-eastern France. The fragrant allure of mirabelles introduces a colourful mix of old acquaintances renewed in these five days and vividly remembered places that have shaped a lifetime's writing. With its reflections, often whimsical, on the passing of the years, and its varied motifs - the plums, the provincial stillness, the toy soldiers of his childhood, 'the astonishing existence of others' first discovered as a love-struck schoolboy - this has few rivals as a portrayal of town life in la France profonde, written with tenderness and humour. A translated memoir, in which the author chooses the height of the mirabelle season in Lorraine for a long-delayed visit to his home town, Luneville. It presents a series of impressions, encounters and musings that takes us from Friday Evening to Tuesday Morning, through a remembered topography that has largely shaped a lifetime's writing. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.…