Book Review: A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle
Random House, Inc., Vintage Books, 1991. © By Karen-Claire Voss

As Peter Mayle explains, he and his wife had gone to Provence a number of times as tourists, but this time “we had done it. We had committed ourselves. We had bought a house, taken French lessons, said our goodbyes, shipped over our two dogs, and become foreigners.” Nothing like a dry travelogue, permeated with stock phrases, this book constitutes a gracious invitation to the reader to share in the adventures and misadventures of that first, unforgettable year. He relates the bureaucratic hurdles that had to be overcome before they could buy a car. He explains how at first they felt it necessary to keep everything from their birth certificates to their passports with them at all times. He relates how they learned the most basic of French body language: the shrug. (He doesn’t limit himself to mentioning only the shrug; later on, he devotes four more pages to various other manifestations of body language, including the differences between Parisian and Provençal cheek kissing. Lastly, he explains how a local man, widely regarded as a kind of sage on all matters pertaining to weather forecasting, “predicted an early, warm spring.”

However, it turns out that before there was any respite from temperatures of six degrees below, workers were invited to remodel the kitchen, and that necessitated breaking into an outside wall. Some mornings were so cold the author says he could see his wife’s breath in the air when she talked at breakfast. We hear about the successful quest for a stone table, and all the adventures concomitant with the installation of a central heating system, an operation that took place in the middle of a by then positively sweltering summer. The culmination of the remodeling took place when all of the interior walls were plastered and painted. The house was finally finished by Christmas Eve, and all of the workers and their wives were invited to celebrate. A repast fit for a king was prepared, including a foie gras that was stuffed with slices of truffles and cooked. The house gleamed. Then the guests arrived. They surprised the couple with a stunning house warming present -- an antique jardinière, fashioned from one massive piece of stone, and planted with flowers. The whole affair reminds one of a Provençal version of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, except that Mr. Blandings’ builders in no way resembled the lovable characters in Mayle’s account.

Mayle’s gift for descriptive prose is by no means limited to minute, albeit entertaining, accounts of the mundane. He also has an extremely appealing and insightful way of opening up the unique psychology underlying behaviors and attitudes in Provence. One thing that comes through is his great love and respect for these people, and, it must be admitted, for the food that is delicious beyond imagining. His memorable recounting of one episode, a party at a “résidence secondaire,” involving ever so sophisticated and elegant Parisians, portrays the outsiders in such a way that it is clear his sympathies are entirely with the natives. It also becomes obvious that he holds no truck with sham of any kind, and has little patience with the status-seeking, everything-is-image crowd “dressed by Vogue,” as he puts it.

The author has gone on to write two more books about Provence, but in my opinion, this one is the best, because it was written in the full flush of that unforgettable first series of encounters. It really conveys the experience of what it was like for him and his wife to actually live there, and by the end of the book, the reader almost feels as if he or she were actually part of it. Peter Mayle makes Provence accessible, real, even to someone sitting in an armchair in Minnesota. It would be a rare person indeed who didn’t feel like picking up the phone and booking the first available flight to “la France.”

All in all, a rare treat.

©Ted R. Marcus

© Peter D'Aprix

©Ted R. Marcus

©Ted R. Marcus