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jewelkr's review against another edition
Ah the 80's - a decade of ridiculous excess enjoyed by anyone who made more than $10,000 a year.
I remember hearing about this book, how funny and charming it was - an English couple buys a house in rural France and spends a year there. They are plagued with old world customs of a strange culture and it is all so amusing. I didn't get to read it then as it came out shortly before my own life fell apart in my early 30's.
So I gave it a shot recently and I gotta say - doesn't hold up. The descriptions of the local service people seem mean and ignorant. The humour is more than understated; it is non-existent, as it relies on how Peter Mayle and his wife (never to be named, same as the dogs) look down on everyone around them while still enjoying all the good stuff - mostly food and wine.
It's hard to believe this became a franchise, never mind that this book is still in print. It is hopelessly irrelevant in a world where everyone's culture is sacred and most of us can do our own travelling; millennials will be unimpressed by the well-funded move from Britain to France. Mayle enjoyed the opportunity available to men in the 20th century who could get junior executive jobs, change up as wanted, buy businesses and then have their cronies publish their travel journals.
A word of warning - there are only glimmerings of the misogyny that Mayle blatantly parades in his later fiction Hotel Pastise, but it's there. It doesn't seem like women take part in Mayle's world; most of the stories are of his dealings with the men in the area which is probably a good thing because the gross sexualization of every female in the Hotel book is quite unbelievable. I guess he was just warming up to it.
I remember hearing about this book, how funny and charming it was - an English couple buys a house in rural France and spends a year there. They are plagued with old world customs of a strange culture and it is all so amusing. I didn't get to read it then as it came out shortly before my own life fell apart in my early 30's.
So I gave it a shot recently and I gotta say - doesn't hold up. The descriptions of the local service people seem mean and ignorant. The humour is more than understated; it is non-existent, as it relies on how Peter Mayle and his wife (never to be named, same as the dogs) look down on everyone around them while still enjoying all the good stuff - mostly food and wine.
It's hard to believe this became a franchise, never mind that this book is still in print. It is hopelessly irrelevant in a world where everyone's culture is sacred and most of us can do our own travelling; millennials will be unimpressed by the well-funded move from Britain to France. Mayle enjoyed the opportunity available to men in the 20th century who could get junior executive jobs, change up as wanted, buy businesses and then have their cronies publish their travel journals.
A word of warning - there are only glimmerings of the misogyny that Mayle blatantly parades in his later fiction Hotel Pastise, but it's there. It doesn't seem like women take part in Mayle's world; most of the stories are of his dealings with the men in the area which is probably a good thing because the gross sexualization of every female in the Hotel book is quite unbelievable. I guess he was just warming up to it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Misogyny, Cultural appropriation, and Colonisation