A Farmhouse in Provence

by Mary Roblee Henry

All roads led to Provence after Mary Roblee and her French husband, Paul-Marc Henry, found a forsaken ruin on a hilltop near Avignon. In one afternoon they bought all twelve acres, launching into the pitfalls and pleasures of restoring their pile of stones and gnarled landscape into a farmhouse and a vineyard. Five years passed before they drank a goblet of their own wine, their orchards flowered, and their monastic white-walled rooms were filled with Provençal anitques. In discovering the fun and fascination of local customs, cuisine and history, Mary Henry learned, as an American woman, to glean the secret art of cross-cultural living and above all, to cope with the care and feeding of a Frenchman.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Travel, France

220 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2000

Reviews

[Anne]

A Farmhouse in Provence is an okay book. It is well written, describing the ups and downs of Mary Roblee Henry, a travel editor for a fashion magazine in New York, and Paul-Marc, her diplomat husband, who found a decrepit farmhouse in a tiny village in the Vacluse and spent five years and God knows how much money turning it into a 15 room summer palace with two kitchens and five bedrooms.
Henry does a good job of painting the scenery and the characters who inhabit it, including her father-in-law, Beau Pere, who alternately throws cold water on the project, and revels in the lifestyle of the French countryside, with its two hour, four course lunches. The reader learns about the workmen who dig and plumb and plaster, and the tenant farmer who restores the vines so the Henrys can have their own vineyard. The author also entertainingly fills us in on the history of Provence, how Avignon, the nearest large town, was the site of the papal palace of the French popes, who divided the church for over 100 years, and how in 1209, Pope Innocent III sent his crusaders west to crush the movement of the Cathares, a Christian sect. This was known as the Albigensian Crusade.
If you enjoy reading about the reclamation of the countryside as a place for country houses for foreigners, read this book.

[Kelsey]

An easy read about a French-American couple restoring a mas in Seguret in the Vaucluse department of France. Fun and engaging, but it doesn't have quite the warmth and insight as A Year in Provence.

But we have not changed, nor could we, the basic rhythm of life in our village. If anything, it has changed us, and when we are in Seguret, we live as the Seguretiens. Here, when the world seems on the verge of falling apart, the center holds. (195)

[Laura]

The book just didn't really get me as interested as I had hoped. Too much over-description in every single sentence. Plus - she was living in France and wasn't even interested in the food!!?! She complained about her French father-in-law's knowledge and interest (she called it an obsession) with food. Seriously?!