Everyone who is British living in France profonde utters, as axiomatic, ‘France is like the Britain of our childhood’, by which they mean, depending on their certain age, the 1950s or the 1970s or 1990s. Don’t get me started on her sisters, especially Lily. Actually, let me rephrase that. Don’t get me started on her Mom. Goodness gracious, they were all unbearable and Rose definitely should’ve cut all ties. It’s an unhealthy dynamic all around that clearly is serving nobody. Is it possible to move to another country to escape unhappiness and defeat? The protagonist, Rose Zadeh, is a people pleaser. Rose puts the demands of her family, job, and anyone who asks for anything before her own needs. “NO” is not in her vocabulary, and when she is disappointed and not rewarded for her efforts and help, Rose decides to use her three-week vacation to go to Paris to find her dreams. It reminded me all over again of why I threw up everything for the magic of La Belle France' Carol Drinkwater, author of The Olive Farm

He has moved with his family, dogs, and various animals. The aim is to reconnect with nature, to farm for the person rather than for money, and to become at least 50% self-sufficient by the end of the year. Lewis-Stempel’s best book in an age; my favourite, certainly, since Meadowland. I’m featuring it in a summer post because, like Peter Mayle’s Provence series, it’s ideal for armchair travelling. Especially with the heat waves that have swept Europe this summer, I’m much happier reading about France or Italy than being there. The author has written much about his Herefordshire haunts, but he’s now relocated permanently to southwest France (La Roche, in the Charente). He proudly calls himself a peasant farmer, growing what he can and bartering for much of the rest. La Vie chronicles a year in his quest to become self-sufficient. It opens one January and continues through the December, an occasional diary with recipes. Lauren Parvizi, the author of “La Vie, According to Rose,” has written a provocative, memorable, and heartfelt novel. The genres for this book are fiction, women’s fiction, and contemporary. I love how the author vividly describes her dramatically flawed characters as complex and complicated. Emotionally, my reaction was screaming and shaking some selfish characters. In life, there are givers and takers. In this book, the author discusses the importance of self-worth, finding and accepting oneself, second chances, finding a balance, and the importance of family and friends.

An utterly beguiling immersion in La France Profonde, keenly observed and beautifully told' Felicity Cloake, author of One More Croissant for the Road A number of English-language books about French life and culture incorporate c’est la vie in their titles, such as the 2017 self-help book C’est La Vie: The French Art of Letting Go. British nature writer John Lewis-Stempel is a man who takes birdsong seriously. In the Preface to this book, he highlights the song of nightingales as a reason to relocate to rural France. As a sort of Afterward, he compiles a list of all of the birds see on his own patch at La Roche in the Charente region. Throughout the novel, he notes which birds are singing; and just occasionally, those brief times in the annual calendar when there is seemingly no birdsong at all. The deepest division is not just between "right" and "left", as it was until recently in Britain, but between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary, secular Jacobin and Catholic royalist, still impassioned by the legacy of the revolution. Only recently has consensus, along with non-party issue politics and both localised and European campaigns, blurred the divide - the symbolic moment being perhaps the sinking of the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior by the French secret services under a socialist government in 1985. As for Rose’s character, I’m a little conflicted. As the oldest Zadeh sister, she’s a pathological people pleaser. I empathized with her, but there were many times when enough was enough. She didn’t stand up for herself until the very end of the novel and it made the pacing drag out too long only to feel rushed at the end. She let everyone walk all over her, and yes, I say let because, from her inner dialogue, it’s clear that this is a conscious decision. She believes that defending herself will ruffle too many feathers.

Sometimes rural France is older still. While we were house-hunting and renting the mill in the hedged bocage of northern Deux-Sevres the birdsong was of medieval intensity. Here, in our corner of woods and arable fields in eastern Charente-Maritime, we are at Renaissance level.

Today's paper

This book is good. I do feel like the first half is very dense and in some points, it becomes a little repetitive. I think the book could’ve been shorter and at the same time I felt like there were some parts of the book that were incomplete. The second half was really good. The “mystery” was interesting, and I wish it was mentioned or talked about more.

How many times can a person loose keys or phones in a three week period, according to this once a week on average. How many times will a woman not use her good sense to figure a way out of said predicament but rather phone it in, again three times on average. And for good measure most of those phone calls will be to a smarmy con man named KID. And Rose is too stupid to notice he’s a con. But the signs were slapping her in the face constantly.Kedward quite rightly calls French education "the main vector of a unifying culture", consciously asserting the risks of losing what was so painfully and often violently fought for. The French are acutely aware (this is part of their anti-Americanism) of the difference between their enlightenment republic and the far more powerful version across the Atlantic - for the cause of which France bankrupted itself before its own revolution: America kept religion, enabling a return in recent years to the worst period of messianic empire-building and the assertion of an aggressive individualism which excludes the poor. For the French republic is also the interventionist state - thanks in part to the solid strength of the communists among the working class as well as among writers and intellectuals before and after the war: hospitals are excellent, trains run on time, city centres are relatively clean and civilised (though media-bloated insécurité has become a recent obsession). Economic liberalism, and France's various recessions, now threaten one of the most cherished values of the republic: to care materially for its citizens. Ever since I bought a house in rural France I have been attracted to this sort of guidepost book; my ignorance of France is not quite total, but there are innumerable blanks to fill. Sometimes a knowledgeable foreigner is best-placed to describe and explain the cultural differences in his adopted country. I feel enriched, bit by bit, by descriptions of food, custom, terroir, language and manners as interpreted by a sensitive and observant insider/outsider. John Lewis-Stempel has permanently moved to France and become a self-sufficient farmer in the Charente region, living in extremely rural France or “la France Profonde”. Kedward is careful, however, to indicate the failures and hypocrisies of this position, showing how many can be excluded from the notion of égalité - including women, unable to vote until 1945, and immigrant workers living in appalling suburban shanty towns in the 60s. Lewis-Stempel is a farmer of mediaeval heritage, with his family owning the same land for 700 years. But he has bought a house in the Charente region of France. This house comes with a potager, various farm buildings, and other accoutrements of a house built in rural France during the Belle Époque. The book recounts a year in his life: January-December.