I really think some stories are seasonal. Autumn stories get us to think about life and its priorities; generation-spanning epics are good for those long, winter nights and spring stories are about inspiration. Summer stories live in another world, one of twilight and green shade and flirting. Summer novels are meant to be read with pink lemonade on a porch swing or on a chaise in the shade. These are the tales of romance and fun, even the ones that don’t contain conventional love stories. Summer is the frothiest part of the reading year and Peter Mayle writes summer stories like no one else. His novel, A Good Year, suggests the summer can do more than help you through a domestic crisis; it can lead you to the best part of your life. This tale goes well with lemonade.. If Summer is the season for self-awareness, then Max Skinner is neglecting the calendar as well as his personal life. While others are living their London lives, Max has bartered his for a high-stress job and a possible bonus. A self-serving boss robs him of both just as Max learns the uncle who raised him died. Max may be out of…
Ok it’s January, cold, bleak and raining. The decorations have been packed away, the weight from party nibbles has been packed on and I’m uncomfortably aware of the low balance in the checking account and the high one on the credit card. I don’t want to sound ungrateful after all of these winter festivities but I think I need a vacation. I want to go someplace warm where life’s pace moves with the seasons and nothing moves too fast. Someplace where living well is more than the best revenge. Oh heck, I want A Year in Provence. A Year in Provence is one of those miracles that hit the publishing business about twenty years ago. Picture this: British author and advertising executive, Peter Mayle, accumulates enough money to retire early and move into an old, stone, farm house in the South of France. Living there, he finds, is both less relaxing and more fun than he ever anticipated. He writes an account of the strange and wonderful things he finds there (under the heading of strange include a neighbor who expects him to cook a fox; the expert who teaches him how to handicap a goat race; the winter gales…
Some books are like a vacation. Open the covers, look at the first paragraph and you’re on your way to some exotic location, away from the everyday grind. You can go hunting with Hemingway, rafting with Twain or sailing with Thor Heyerdahl. Those vacations are wonderful, but come along with me to the South of France. You won’t have to pack a bag or learn the language but you must bring along your sense of humor. It’s required when you check in to The Hotel Pastis by Peter Mayle Peter Mayle made enough wealth and fame in advertising to retire early to a farmhouse in France. Then he became internationally rich and famous writing about his retired life. The Hotel Pastis is a novel but there’s enough about advertising and the South of France there to suggest it’s a thinly disguised memoir with just enough fiction in it to keep people from suing. Truth or libel, the book is a treat. The hero, Simon Shaw, is a man in need of an interest. His work life doesn’t fascinate him any more: the ad agency he helped build is so successful that all he does is butter up clients, cash the…