Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
Peter Mayle offers us another funny and beautiful book about life in Provence. Here is a heart-warming portrait of a place where, if you can't quite "get away from it all," you can surely have the best of times trying.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Affectionate Portrait of Provence
Customer Rating:
Slowly, I'm working my way through Peter Mayle's books though these books could more rightly be described as his love letters to Provence.
Toujours Provence begins where his first book A Year In Provence ended. Now a seasoned resident of this region of France, he broadens his view to give us an affectionate portrait of the French in all their regional peculiarities.
At once amusing and educational, this book gives the reader the sense of what it would be like to see France as a resident, not a tourist.
I know I've entertained daydreams of living in France of Italy, at least for a summer. Mayle's books make me want to act upon that fantasy.
This book is my perfect choice for bedtime reading. Not because it's boring and makes me sleepy. Not because it's easy to put down when sleep calls. Reading this book is a calm interlude in my busy life. Mayle has a droll humor and a flair for understatement of the incongruous situations that develop. I find myself smiling, and I can feel the stress melting away.
Toujours Provence, like its predecessor A Year In Provence, is the perfect armchair vacation.
A solid sequel
Customer Rating:
Having survived French bureaucracy, endless home improvement, goat races, hunters, Massot's dogs, summer visitors, and other hazards during A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle brings us more of the same in Toujours Provence.
This time Mayle takes a more illustrative approach. Beginning with a pharmaceuticals marketing brochure that depicts a snail whose "horns drooped" and whose "eye was lackluster," Mayle educates us about health concerns and approaches in Provence--including house calls. Anecdotes relate Mayle's love of picnicking Provence style (with chef, wait staff, and linens); his quest for singing toads, truffles, and napoléons (the coins); his pursuit of Pavarotti and pastis; and, of course, his passion for the region's fresh foods and fine vintages.
With a few exceptions, such as the history of pastis and the more sobering story of summer drought and forest fires, much of Toujours Provence will seem familiar territory to readers of the first book. For the most part, Mayle is in fine form, writing that Bennett, "looking like the reconnaissance scout from a Long Range Desert Group . . . had crossed enemy lines on the main N100 road, successfully invaded Ménerbes, and was now ready for the final push into the mountains." Some anecdotes, like "No Spitting in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape," end brilliantly, while others, such as "Napoléons at the Bottom of the Garden," fall a little flat.
Judith Clancy's delightful artwork is back, but what is missing from Toujours Provence are the quirky characters we came to love or at least wonder about. Most are mentioned or make a brief appearance, but mainly they are relegated to the background. Even Mayle's neighbor Massot (". . . it would be difficult to imagine a more untrustworthy old rogue this side of the bars of Marseille prison"), to whom half a chapter is devoted, is here more caricature than character. We know no more about him, or Faustin and Henriette or Monsieur Menicucci, than we did at the end of the first book. By now, Mayle's circle has expanded , but no one he meets, from the toad choir director to the flic, is nearly as interesting as his neighbors or his builders from the first book.
Like an adequate movie sequel, Toujours Provence carries on in the same vein as its predecessor, with a slightly different or reduced cast and a little less originality and wit. Perhaps more appropriately, I should say it's like a wine slightly past its peak--still worth drinking, but somehow not quite as enjoyable.
A Year in Provence
Customer Rating:
Peter Mayle is a great writer in his descriptions and the way he makes you a part of his life in Provence, specially if you don't understand the language or the habits of the «Natives»! The best book I ever read! Doris Veillette Hamel, Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada
breezy episodes in the south of France
Customer Rating:
Mayle's style is light and breezy; he does the joie de vivre thing as in his first Provence book. This book is really an elaboration of the episodes in A Year in Provence. Mayle does insert new characters and gustatory adventures that keep the reading lively however.
There are many charming anecdotes in this book. Mayle is a first-class storyteller who drops alot of French words throughout his narrative in English. This, along with his modest humour, really make this a decent read.
Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts
Toujours Provence
Customer Rating:
I enjoyed Mayle's first book A Year in Provence a lot better than this book. If you want to learn about French food and meals then this book will help you. But it is not as funny as his first book.
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