A Year in Provence

After years of visiting Provence as tourists, Englishman Peter Mayle, his wife Jennie, and their two dogs took the plunge and purchased a house in the Lubéron valley in Provence. The mas, or farmhouse, was located on the country road that runs between the medieval villages of Ménerbes and Bonnieux. The farmhouse was two hundred years old and made of local stone. A Year in Provence is a witty, insightful, and delightful record of the Mayle's first year as French residents. Each chapter is devoted to a month and readers are taken through a year divided up by weather, crops, the vendage, markets, boules, and feast days. Life in Provence as a rhythm all its own. The terroir and weather (especially the formidable mistral) are standout characters on par with the disappearing construction crew and colorful neighbors.
I loved the description of the cornucopia of goods found at one of the local markets. "We set off for the main square, running the gauntlet between groups of sallow gypsy girls in tight, shiny black skirts selling lemons and long plaits of garlic, hissing at one another in competition. The stalls were crammed haphazardly along the street--silver jewelry next to flat wedges of salt cod, wooden barrels of gleaming olives, hand-woven baskets, cinnamon and saffron and vanilla, cloudy bunches of gypsophila, a cardboard box full of mongrel puppies, lurid Johnny Hallyday T-shirts, salmon-pink corsets and brassieres of heroic proportions, rough country bread and dark terrines" (May page 92). Every French village has a market; some of the larger ones are truly remarkable for the range of produce and miscellany one can find.
Mayle's book makes one appreciate the land, food, climate, and people on a local level. One evening, their neighbor Faustin brought them a large bunch of fresh asparagus which they cooked and ate with "bread that had been baked that afternoon in the old boulangerie at Lumières. We drank the light red wine from the vineyards in the valley. We supported local industry with every mouthful" (May page 86). One can almost taste and smell the local delicacies. 

For further reading I recommend Mayle's Toujours Provence, a continuation of his life in Provence and his novel Hotel Pastis. There is also Alphonse Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin which is a collection of short stories and provencal lore written in the 19th century.