A Year in Provence (SIGNED COPY)

MAYLE, Peter (illustrated by Leslie Forbes)

ISBN 10: 0241122201 / ISBN 13: 9780241122204

Published by Hamish Hamilton, London, 1989

About this Item

2nd Impression. 8vo in dark blue faux cloth, gilt lettering to spine. 197pp. Inscribed and signed by Peter Mayle on the half title leaf (no other marks or inscriptions) . [CONDITION: An extremely well preserved FINE very clean and tight copy (thin sliver of very slight creasing to bottom edge of spine) in an almost AS NEW complete Dust Jacket (priced £12.95). Any printings of the first edition are elusive, signed copies are now very scarce ] . . __NOTE. Depending on destination, this item may require an extra payment for shipping insurance. If so, orders made by card will be completed only after you have approved the extra cost . We always ship in STRONG PROTECTIVE CARD PARCELS.

Seller Inventory # TK231058

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Year in Provence (SIGNED COPY)
• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, London
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241122201
• ISBN 13: 9780241122204
• Binding: HARDCOVER
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

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 and the influx of tourists, the grape "vendange" and the mushroom season, to the Christmas gastronomie splurge.

Review

Who hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, 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