![]() Obviously, a book cannot thrive without readers, and I’m lucky enough to have met hundreds of them, either face to face or through their letters and photographs. His adventures, gastronomic and otherwise, are thoroughly entertaining. That, I suppose, is contentment, and I shall always be grateful to the literary accident known as A Year In Provence for helping me to achieve it. ![]() He opens with an account of a memorable New Year's lunch, ends with an appreciation of an impromptu Christmas dinner, and describes just about every meal eaten during the months in between. The Provencal cuisine is Mayle's leitmotif, however. Even donating blood is an occasion for fun. ![]() In nimble prose, Mayle, columnist for GQ, captures the humorous aspects of visits to markets, vineyards and goat races, and hunting for mushrooms. ![]() Throwing themselves into the life of this rural region, they master the local customs, gain partial understanding of their neighbors' patois, overcome the frustrations of French bureaucracy, and learn to deal with workmen who operate on the idiosyncratic Provencal sense of time. The author describes his first 12 months in Provence, after he and his wife have abandoned England for an 18th-century farmhouse in the Luberon Mountains. ![]()
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