Anu Recommends #23

Book Travel: A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, and a Pomegranate Summer

Hi and welcome to the Storyteller!

That we’re halfway through the year already feels simultaneously believable and incredulous to me—anyone else?

So, when it came to deciding what to write about for this issue, I decided to focus on a book that instantly forces me to slow down and smell the roses, as it were.

This is also the first post in a new mini-series of Storyteller issues about what I like to call book travel. I even share a snippet from my own published travel micro collection, Pomegranate Summer if you make it to the end (if you’re in India, you might also be interested in knowing that I have a few signed copies for purchase; more info below).

As an aside, if you missed out on last Sunday’s fabulous interview with debut author Kika Hatzapoulou, as well as a review of her book Threads That Bind, you can catch up here.

A uniquely portable magic

Reading a good book has always given me a feeling of being at peace with the world and myself, even as it takes me out of my comfort zone, transports, guiding me through through time and place, through perspectives so far removed from my own yet strangely familiar in that which unites us. It's the kind of escapism that, to me, is simultaneously grounding, anchoring me to myself, and the reality of the space I occupy.

And while I read more fiction than I do non-fiction, I have to kick off this series with a travel book, because it never fails me when I need calm and comfort…and humour, of course.

“Today it is Sunday in Provence and life is to be enjoyed.”

A Year in Provence was published in 1989, my birth year. A nice little coincidence for this gloriously perfect book that I read for the first time on a stormy Sunday during the first wave of the pandemic. Reading it when I did was a reminder that there IS a right time to read a book and books do tend to respond when you need them most (I had bought this book a few years before but not gotten around to picking it up).

Peter Mayle, an advertising professional who had also worked in academic publishing, moved from England to France in 1987 with his wife Jennie. They purchased a 200-year-old farmhouse overlooking a national park and the famous Lubéron mountains in Provence. The book takes us through that first year, with each chapter corresponding to the month of the year, so that not only do we follow the trajectory of the Mayles' year and everything that happened, we also follow a Provençal year in its culture, its weather, its locals, its rural life across the four seasons.

What is immediately evident is Mayle's keenly observant eye for the sort of detail that brings stories and people and places to life. There is also a wonderful sense of humour, a narrative voice that is captivating and makes you a part of the tableaux he presents, and an ability to not only grasp insight that seems effortless while being anything but, but also the ability to weave that into his recollections without interfering with or bringing the reader out of the narration. It is the kind of travel writing I delight in and aspire to write. No wonder then that A Year in Provence inspired and spawned an entire genre that we now take for granted.

Have you read A Year in Provence or any of the follow-up books Peter Mayle wrote? Or maybe you’ve read his fiction? (A Good Year starring Russell Crowe was adapted from one of his novels.)

Where has your book travel taken you? Do share!

Pomegranate Summer

I don't believe that I've written what I've seen in this book. It would be more appropriate to say that I observed what I did because I was writing this book. A journal supposedly reflects our thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Not at all. It creates them. If we didn't write, reality would disappear from our minds. our eyes would remain empty.—Andres Neuman, How to Travel Without Seeing

When I wrote the individual stories that eventually became the travel micro collection Pomegranate Summer, I was thinking of nothing else but trying to imprint some part of cherished memories onto the page before they dissolved into shimmering air.

‘Rafael of Plaça Reial’ is an ode to a stranger. For the title story set in Granada, I was inspired by Neuman (incidentally I finished reading the book while in Granada where he’s grown up, studied, and taught since his family went there in exile from Buenos Aires; don’t you love when everything just fits). The second story, ‘In Search of the Shadow of the Wind’ is a perfect coming together of everything that book travel encompasses—I physically trace the footsteps of characters I first met within pages and through words before returning to words to capture the memory.

Snippet:

I walk past muted pastel red, green, and violet, the gilded Opera house; past intricate carvings, pillars, the delicatelycraftedbutsolid wrought-iron balconies of the Las Ramblas. This hour, this early glow already feels like a scrap left behind by wistful daydreams. Half-open shutters and a reverse tilt shift—a city, its people rising in focus.—Anushree Nande

If you liked what you read above, folks in the US, UK, and Europe can buy a physical copy here. Due to KDP laws in India, I could only list an ebook, which you can get at the same link. However, as I mentioned earlier, I do have a few physical copies for sale for my Indian readers (that I will happy sign and personalise), so do get in touch if you’re interested!

Leaving you with some reviews for it 😊 (here’s the Goodreads page for it, as well).

---

As always, please feel free send in recommendations—books, movie, TV shows, authors to interview, ideas of what you’d like me to write on, rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them) and more. Just drop me a line and turn this into a conversation, even if just to say hi and let me know what you thought of the latest issue 😊 Or share this with someone you think might enjoy it.

Take care and see you next week!

Anu

---

If you really like the newsletter, please feel free to buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/anushreenande

You can find me on Twitter at @AnuNande (follow for all the football chatter) and on Instagram at @booksinboston.