Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter Mayle
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Rating:  77 reviews
Sales Rank: 225259
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0679762698
Dewey Decimal Number: 944.9
EAN: 9780679762690
ASIN: 0679762698
Publication Date: April 2000
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Condition: Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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Amazon.com Review
"Provence, again?" one may think, seeing Peter Mayle's latest effort. "Has the man nothing better to do than promote a region that's already overhyped and overpriced? Can't he turn his eye to a place that needs a touristic boost, like Bulgaria?" However, there are reasons to plunge into the third Provençal book by Englishman Mayle, formerly a Madison Avenue copywriter whose bestselling A Year in Provence made the area a must-see for tourists and helped to quadruple real estate prices there. After four years in Long Island, Mayle has returned to France with continuing adoration. Mayle discloses a world missed by tourists, be it the questions dry cleaners ask about wine stains or the mysterious murder of a small-town butcher given to making housewives happy with more than his displayed meat. He also incorporates guide-like tips--listing markets, cheese makers, and the essential how-tos of perfume sniffing and olive-oil tasting. What's more, this book gives a peek into the life of a bestselling writer. The role is not always an enviable one. Mayle no longer fits into life in America--the vocabulary alone is enough to throw him off--yet in Provence, he is regarded as little more than a moneyed foreigner. Speared by the British press, he laments, "One of my crimes is to have encouraged people to visit the region ... far too many people ... and people of the wrong sort," an accusation that he denies. And Mayle comes off as positively defensive in his attack of former New York Times food critic Ruth Reichl, who wrote that she was disappointed in the region. The title alone of chapter 3 hints at the sarcastic stabbings to follow: "New York Times Restaurant Critic Makes Astonishing Discovery: Provence Never Existed." Page after page, he roasts Reichl on the spit, creating a hissing Ruth Rotisserie that's most unbecoming from someone of his stature. What most causes him to sputter is Reichl's admission that she "had been dreaming of a Provence that never existed." "Where had I been living all these years?" writes the man who's helped to perpetrate the illusion of a land that is nothing but lavender fields, sunflowers swaying in the breeze, and fascinating characters every millimeter. "The Provence that Daudet, Giono, Ford Madox Ford, Lawrence Durrell and M.F.K. Fisher knew and wrote about--the Provence that I know--doesn't exist.... It's a sunny figment of our imagination, a romanticized fantasy." Maybe. Having recently visited Provence, I agree with Reichl's critical assessment. Therein lies Mayle's ultimate charm. Crack open a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape, delve into Encore Provence, and voilà: it may be better than actually being there. --Melissa Rossi
Product Description
In his most delightful foray into the wonders of Provençal life, Peter Mayle returns to France and puts behind him cholesterol worries, shopping by phone, California wines, and other concerns that plagued him after too much time away.
In Encore Provence, Mayle gives us a glimpse into the secrets of the truffle trade, a parfumerie lesson on the delicacies of scent, an exploration of the genetic effects of 2,000 years of foie gras, and a small-town murder mystery that reads like the best fiction. Here, too, are Mayle's latest tips on where to find the best honey, cheese, or chambre d'hìte the region has to offer. Lyric, insightful, sparkling with detail, Encore Provence brings us a land where the smell of thyme in the fields or the glory of a leisurely lunch is no less than inspiring.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 Tales from Provence June 17, 2008
Rebecca Johnson (Washington State)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you have ever visited Provence, reading "Encore Provence" will ensure a flood of pleasant memories. Homesick for Provence, Peter Mayle leaves his home in America (he is originally from England) and returns to his true love, France.
What really keeps the French trim and healthy? What prevents olive oil from quickly turning rancid? How can you ease a sore throat with lavender essential oil?
Peter Mayle answers these questions and more. His writing has a rare warmth and his descriptions of restaurants makes you want to experience every nuance. Whether he is visiting a distillery or explaining the process of buying a house, he tells the story with a sense of adventure.
Since Peter Mayle loves to watch people more than TV he provides some interesting descriptions of village inhabitants. He tells his stories with a sense of relish and he even made Marseille sound more exciting. This book made me wish for another bottle of olive oil I found in Cassis on a weekend trip I made to Provence. It also reminded me to buy another bag of Fleur de Sel.
I can also recommend: A Year in Provence
~The Rebecca Review
 Comme toujours May 26, 2008
Diane Schirf
For an unexplained reason, Peter Mayle and his unnamed wife (presumably the "Jennie" of the dedication) left paradise in Provence for Long Island. In Encore Provence, he returns to the south of France, where the food, wine, and slow pace of life again absorb his attention.
Even less structured than Toujours Provence, Encore Provence covers familiar territory from new angles. "The Unsolved Murder of the Handsome Butcher" and "Recipe for a Village" address both the insularity and charms of village life ("Recipe" much less successfully), while "How to Be a Nose," "Discovering Oil," and "Friday Morning in Carpentras" provide insights into the perfume, olive oil, and truffle industries, respectively. In one of the best chapters, "Restaurant Critic Makes Astonishing Discovery," Mayle effectively and humorously discredits Ruth Reichl's flippant dismissal of Provence. How could a serious critic, after only a month's visit, write, "I had been dreaming of a Provence that never existed"? To help the reader find ripe tomatoes--which Reichl could not manage to do--and other products of Provence, Mayle provides the names and places for markets, vineyards, restaurants, bakeries, and producers of goods like olive oil and honey. It becomes clear that Reichl could not find Provence because she actively avoided it; perhaps she thought that deflating the expectations that Mayle helped to create was a better story than simply reinforcing them.
Several chapters, like "Curious Reasons for Liking Provence" and "Eight Ways to Spend a Summer's Afternoon," reveal one of the problems with Encore Provence--the lack of significant new material. More filler than substance, they are more like random personal essays than integral parts of a cohesive work, as though Mayle could not think of a better way to frame his random observations. These chapters are forced, splintered, and almost unnecessary.
Surprisingly, there is a less of a sense of place. In the previous Provence books, Mayle's stone house, with its location abutting public forest, its isolation from traffic, its drawn-out renovations, its pool that attracts thirsty sangliers, and its quirky neighbors like Faustin and Massot, gives the reader a strong sense of a place with personality. The house is at the heart of A Year in Provence. In Encore Provence, it is not clear that Mayle and his wife return to the same house or what their neighbors are like. Even the dogs are mostly absent. Without structure and intimacy, Encore Provence is nothing more than a series of disconnected travelogue stories. Perhaps weary of intrusions into his privacy, or perhaps unclear about the reasons for the first book's success, Mayle distances himself from his reader.
There may not be much left for Mayle to say about Provence. He writes that, due to building restrictions, not much has changed. Yet he notes that "the garage and the geese are gone, and the farmhouse has sprouted wings and annexes . . . the vines have been groomed" and "the refugees' urge for rapid [gardening] results has spawned an industry: instant gardens, shipped in and set up with astonishing speed." These are only a couple of small changes, to be sure, but in time there will be more, and Provence will alter slowly and subtly. Mayle should know that that is the nature of change in the countryside and that, with enough demand, pressure, and money, change can accelerate, transforming a village into a resort town or farmland into suburbia.
Even if you cannot visit Provence, much of the lifestyle that Mayle describes--with food and drink of varying type and quality--is still available in many places outside France. The slow pace, the fatalistic viewpoint, the elderly gossips and moralists, the close-knit relationships, the helpfulness, and the beauty and quirks of the countryside are found in many regions. If you are as observant and open as Mayle, you may be able to find your version of Provence closer to home.
Paperback??? March 8, 2007
Nancy E. Morgan (New Orleans, LA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book was everything I expected...but y'all sent it in paperback. I never buy a book that I do not want to keep....and I never buy and keep paperback books.
 Life in the South of France March 4, 2007
William D. Tompkins (New York, New York USA)
Food, the air, water, the land and the people in the South of France. The book beautifully took me thru life in this person move to this area.
PROVENCE, ONCE AGAIN November 5, 2006
Marie Antoinette
Peter Mayle effectivately takes us once again to beautiful Provence through his second book. His writing is witty yet very unassuming and laid back. He gives the reader vivid and often funny accounts of the land and its people. He has an uncanny ability to observe the smallest details in the Provencal locals that he meets and to express it in a very entertaining way through his books.
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