[Read] Notes from the C?vennes: Half a Lifetime in Provincial France For Online
- 3 years ago
https://brodymod.blogspot.com/?book=1472966317
A charming memoir exploring the history, landscape and people of rural France, told through the eyes of a Parisian-born Englishman, writer and poet. Adam Thorpe's home for the past 25 years has been an old house in the C?vennes, a wild range of mountains in southern France. Prior to this, in an ancient millhouse in the oxbow of a C?venol river, he wrote the novel that would become the Booker Prize-nominated Ulverton, now a Vintage Classic.In more recent writing Thorpe has explored the C?vennes, drawing on the legends, history and above all the people of this part of France for his inspiration. In his charming journal, Notes from the C?vennes, Thorpe takes up these themes, writing about his surroundings, the village and his house at the heart of it, as well as the contrasts of city life in nearby N?mes. In particular he is interested in how the past leaves impressions--marks--on our landscape and on us. What do we find in the grass, earth and stone beneath our feet and in the objects around us? How do they tie us to our forebears? What traces have been left behind and what marks do we leave now?Part celebration of both rustic and urban France, part memoir, Thorpe's humorous and precise prose shows a wonderful stylist at work, recalling classics such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the C?vennes.
A charming memoir exploring the history, landscape and people of rural France, told through the eyes of a Parisian-born Englishman, writer and poet. Adam Thorpe's home for the past 25 years has been an old house in the C?vennes, a wild range of mountains in southern France. Prior to this, in an ancient millhouse in the oxbow of a C?venol river, he wrote the novel that would become the Booker Prize-nominated Ulverton, now a Vintage Classic.In more recent writing Thorpe has explored the C?vennes, drawing on the legends, history and above all the people of this part of France for his inspiration. In his charming journal, Notes from the C?vennes, Thorpe takes up these themes, writing about his surroundings, the village and his house at the heart of it, as well as the contrasts of city life in nearby N?mes. In particular he is interested in how the past leaves impressions--marks--on our landscape and on us. What do we find in the grass, earth and stone beneath our feet and in the objects around us? How do they tie us to our forebears? What traces have been left behind and what marks do we leave now?Part celebration of both rustic and urban France, part memoir, Thorpe's humorous and precise prose shows a wonderful stylist at work, recalling classics such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the C?vennes.