Peter Mayle · 1989 · exile

Peter Mayle's 1989 account of his first year in a farmhouse in the Luberon, month by month from January to December. It sold in the millions, changed the property market of an entire French department, and is still resented locally for it - a book whose main journey is between one village market and the next.

1. 1
   Menerbes

   January, and an English couple move into a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse between Menerbes and Bonnieux with a view of the Luberon - and discover that the builders who promised April mean April of some year.

2. 2
   Cavaillon

   The market town down on the plain, and the melons it is famous for - the first of the book's long digressions into what the French will do to eat properly, which is what actually sold two million copies.

3. 3
   Bonnieux

   The village up the hill, its cafe and its goat races - Mayle's method being to attend everything the locals do and report it deadpan, which some readers find charming and some find exactly the problem.

4. 4
   Apt

   Saturday market at the top of the valley, and the truffle men with their doubtful scales - the chapter that turns the Luberon economy into comedy without ever quite saying anybody is cheating.

5. 5
   Gordes

   The hill village on the far side, and the summer visitors: the friends of friends who write to ask whether the pool is heated, and arrive for a fortnight, and are the running joke of the book's middle.

6. 6
   Mont Ventoux

   The bald mountain, and the day Mayle decides to cycle up it - twenty-one kilometres at an average of seven per cent, in the company of men in club colours who do not slow down for him.

7. 7
   Chateauneuf-du-Pape

   A tasting invitation that turns into an afternoon and then an evening - and the drive home, which Mayle describes with the care of a man who knows exactly how many cellars he visited.

8. 8
   Aix-en-Provence

   South to the old capital for the things the Luberon does not have, and a look at the Provence the tourists come for - a useful contrast to a valley where the news is who has sold which field.

9. 9
   Menerbes

   December, and the year closes where it opened: the same house, the builders finally gone, and Christmas dinner at home because everywhere else is full of people who have read about the place.