A Year in Provence

A Year in Provence is a 1989 best-selling memoir by Peter Mayle about his first year in Provence, and the local events and customs.[1] It was adapted into a television mini-series starring John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan. Reviewers praised the book's honest style, wit[2] and its refreshing humour.[3] The book was turned into an equally popular radio version.

A Year in Provence
AuthorPeter Mayle
LanguageEnglish
Set inProvence, France
ISBN978-0-679-73114-6

Plot

Peter Mayle and his wife move to Provence, and are soon met with unexpectedly fierce weather, underground truffle dealers and unruly workers, who work around their normalement schedule.[4] Meals in Provençal restaurants and work on the Mayles' house, garden and vineyard are features of the book, whose chapters follow the months of the year.

Miniseries

In 1993, the BBC produced a television miniseries based on the book, starring Lindsay Duncan and John Thaw, with appearances from Alfred Molina and James Fleet amongst others. Unlike the book, the mini series was not well received by critics; A Year in Provence was later placed at number ten on a Radio Times list of the worst television programmes ever made[5][6] with the writer, John Naughton, describing it as a "smugathon ... which achieved the near impossible – creating a John Thaw vehicle nobody liked".[6]

See also

The non-fiction sequels to this book by Peter Mayle are:

  • Toujours Provence 1991
  • Encore Provence 1999
  • French Lessons 2001

See also (a movie based on this novel and the novel Chasing Cezanne also by Peter Mayle):

Mayle's memoir provided inspiration for the 2008 satirical novel A Year In The Province by Christopher Marsh in which an Andalusian man persuades his wife and his three daughters to relocate to Belfast.

References
  1. Crace, John (10 January 2010). "A Year in Provence, 20 years on". Guardian. Retrieved 20 July 2016.
  2. "A Year in Provence, by Peter Mayle". Archived from the original on 29 March 2008. Retrieved 31 March 2008.
  3. "A Year in Provence (BlueRectangle – Book Review & Textbook Buyback)". Archived from the original on 8 July 2011. Retrieved 31 May 2010.
  4. "normalement" is often used when they are asked when jobs will be finished; however it is implied that this timing will never be fulfilled.
  5. Naked Keith Chegwin hits the heights of 'memorably rotten' TV The Guardian, 22 August 2006. Retrieved 2014-03-26.
  6. "The Worst TV shows ever" The Daily Record, 22 August 2006. Retrieved 26 March 2006.
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