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
Cévennes, a wild range of mountains in southern France. Prior to this,
in an ancient millhouse in the oxbow of a Cévenol 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 Cévennes, 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 Cévennes, 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 Nîmes. 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
Cévennes.
