A Gift from Brittany: A Memoir of Love and Loss in the French Countryside

by Marjorie Price

In this enchanting European version of A Year by the Sea, an artist recalls her liberating sojourn in France during the sixties—and the friendship that transformed her life.

Marjorie was a young woman from Chicago in the 1960s who shocked her family and fiancé by moving to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming an artist. There she fell in love and married Yves, a handsome and volatile French painter. On a trip to Brittany, a rugged area on the northern coast of France, her husband impulsively purchases nearly half of a hamlet, La Salle, and she finds herself renovating a house in this remote village. Surrounded by neighbors who dress only in black, speak patois, and still employ customs and farming methods from the Middle Ages, Marjorie finds a friend in Jeanne, an old and illiterate peasant woman who has three cows to her name and no knowledge of the world outside her village. Their differences are staggering, yet as Marjorie’s marriage unravels they forge a friendship brimming with laughter, wisdom, and an uncommon exchange of customs from vastly different cultures.

A Gift from Brittany is a charming, moving memoir about the grace that can be found through friendship, and finding reserves of strength you never knew you possessed.

Genres: Memoir, France, Nonfiction, Travel, International, Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Kate Forsyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love memoirs about brave adventurous people who move to Italy or France or Spain, and renovate an old house, plant a garden, cook fabulous feasts, fall in love and find themselves. Surely its my Sliding Doors life? Sometimes, when I’m meant to be writing, I look at castles for sale in Scotland instead. In fact, I do so far too often. Lately I’ve been gazing longingly at chateaus in Brittany. The book I am now writing is set there and so I can tell myself it’s research and not procrastination.

I stumbled upon this memoir one day while googling ‘Brittany chateaus for sale’ and, on a whim, I bought it. I’m very glad I did. It’s one of the most beautiful and moving memoirs I’ve ever read, and surprising in a number of ways.

Firstly, even though it’s subtitled ‘A Memoir of Love and Loss’, it is not a story about a woman moving to France, falling in love and living happily ever after. Marjorie Price does marry a Frenchman and they do buy an enchanting derelict farmhouse in Brittany, but her husband turns out to be a charming but controlling misogynist who refuse to allow her to paint or make her own decisions. His domineering behaviour escalates to violence, and Marjorie must find the inner strength to escape him and make a life on her own for herself and her daughter.

Secondly, this is not a contemporary tale. Marjorie left her native USA to travel to France in 1960. Her story is therefore set at a time of huge political and cultural change in the world. The scars inflicted by the Second World War are still deep, and the Vietnam War and the battle for civil rights are cutting new ones. Women’s rights are still being fought for, and Marjorie’s decision to travel on her own to Paris and try to make a life for herself as an artist is seen as shocking and unladylike. So the betrayal of her dreams by a misogynist who thinks women should only support their husband’s careers is just heart-breaking, and her struggle to make her own way doubly poignant.

Lastly, A Gift From Brittany has at its heart the story of an unlikely friendship between women. Marjorie is young, college-educated, American, and a single mother, struggling to make her way as an artist. Her neighbour Jeanne is elderly, illiterate, and lives in a cottage with no running water or plumbing. She has never ridden in a car, eaten in a restaurant, talked on the telephone, or seen the sea. She wears a shapeless black dress and a white cap pinned to her hair, as her ancestors have done for years. Yet she is funny, earthy, and unfailingly kind. She helps and supports Marjorie at every new challenge or crisis, and teaches her much about life and the world – even though she has never travelled more than a few miles from her home.

Jeanne is dead now, and so is her way of her life and all her stories and songs. Yet this memoir captures something of her warmth and wisdom, and gives us a poignant glimpse of an ancient vibrant culture that is now mostly lost. A truly wonderful book.

[Dennis Mitton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Gift From Brittany can be viewed from many angles. Francophiles will love the descriptions of 1960s French country life. The author, Marjorie Price – Midge – moves to the French countryside where electricity is not a given, running water is rare, and outhouses are common. For the same reasons, advocates of Slow philosophy will nod in agreement with life set to the tempo of seasons and cows. It’s easy to miss, though, that this is very much a feminist book.

Imagine the early 1960’s in Midwest America. Marjorie Price grows up with a burning. She wants to paint. Her parents are wealthy enough to send her to good schools and she is set to marry a pleasant and safe schoolmate. The entire family shakes when she moves to France where she neither knows anyone nor knows the language. She quickly falls in love with a Parisian artist and dreams of a life of painting and love. Above her protests her husband buys a dilapidated 300 year-old farm in Brittany. They set to rebuild the farm and work on their painting until her husband – afflicted with ‘cyclic personality’ - cuts her canvases with a machete and forbids her to ever paint again. Her job, he says, is to support his genius. His extraordinary ability is too fragile to be bothered by such common things as marriage, child rearing, cooking, or money. (A Wiki search turns up nothing for the man or the artist.) After the family returns to Paris she takes their child and moves back to the farm without her husband.

Alone at La Salle she befriends a local elderly woman and learns about deep friendship. Though different in most ways - maybe because they are different -they accept each other without reservation or judgment. Marjorie learns about farming and country life and Jeanne learns about cars, boats, and ocean sand between your toes. Their friendship deepens through real and near disasters and is a theme threading through the remainder of the story.

Deeper than the narrative is the story of a woman finding strength amid cultures that don’t necessarily enjoy strong women. As dictated as her life might have been in America she was unprepared for the patriarchy of France where, with cultural acceptance, her husband ruled over her as a king. French wives, it seemed, were to look good in bikinis and practice the art of the canapé. But Marjorie Price has other desires. She lives within the customs and conventions but pursues her own dreams as best as she can. A Gift From Brittany is a story for every human being who wants to live authentically to their own desires.

What is the gift from Brittany? Real friendship? An awareness of your own abilities? Expanding your horizons to see that the world is wider than your own two arms? I’m not sure but my copy has a guide with thoughtful questions for readers. More importantly she includes the recipe for Les Quatres Quarts – the favorite dessert made by local women for every event.

The book is written with an easy prose. Descriptions are charming and bucolic and sometimes melodramatic. Any flaws, though, are enormously overcome by the warm humanity of the story.

Four stars.

[Carey · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1960 twenty-eight year old Marjorie Price did a daring and brave thing. She bought a ticket on a transatlantic ship to Paris, third class. Alone. Her family and friends (who call her Midge) are shocked and dismayed. Young ladies just don't DO that in 1960. But Midge is determined. She is an artist, a painter, and Paris is where artists are nurtured, taught, inspired.

Of course, she meets a man. Fellow artist, and native Frenchman, Yves sweeps Midge off her feet and they are soon married. They are very happy together and have a beautiful daughter, Danielle. After a couple of years they begin looking for a summer place. A little cottage in the country by the sea where they can escape the bustle of Paris and paint in peace.

Yves finds a place he says is perfect. An ancient farm house and other buildings that make up half of a tiny hamlet in Brittany. Spartan and without any modern conveniences, it is far from what Midge had in mind. But he is insistent and she is forced into the purchase of La Salle.

At first living conditions are rough but the place works its charm and they begin to fix it up. Midge meets her neighbors, among them Jeanne, a peasant woman nearing seventy who lives in a cottage with no running water or plumbing, has never ridden in a car, eaten in a restaurant, watched television, talked on the telephone, or even been farther than a few miles from her home.

Over the next few years, Yves' personality begins to change radically. As her marriage disintegrates, Jeanne becomes the closest friend that Midge has ever known, they form a bond of friendship that transcends their differences in culture, age or language.

I loved this book. It is a wonderful, loving tribute to a special woman who was the product of a dying way of life. Even during the years she lived at La Salle, Midge saw beautiful old stone farms being bulldozed to make room for pre-fab houses. The peasant life the Jeanne endured is completely gone now. While the country life may seem like an idyll, the author makes clear that Jeanne's life was one filled with back breaking labor and a paucity of sentiment.

This is a story that is at once heartwarming and heartbreaking. Here is a peek at a European way of life that endured for centuries and then completely died out in a few decades. It is one of the best memoirs that I have ever read and I highly recommend it. It would be an excellent choice for book clubs.

[Harvee Lau · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review, from https://bookdilettante.blogspot.com/2...

I thought at the beginning that A Gift from Brittany would be a book along the lines of Frances Mayes' Tuscany books - "love letters" to Italy that are light, mostly cheerful accounts of life in Tuscany.

Marjorie Price's life-altering experience living in an obscure hamlet in Brittany, France, however, the author describes as a "Memoir of Love and Loss in the French Countryside." Though it has cheerful and colorful aspects, the memoir is a poignant story of love lost but also of true friendship found in an quiet corner of rural France.

A young artist in Chicago in the 1960s, the author Midge decides to travel to Paris for several months, against her parents' wishes. In France she meets Yves, an up and coming artist, and as in a fairy tale story, falls in love and marries the Frenchman. They have a daughter, both continue to paint, and all seems to go well until Yves decides to buy a farm in Brittany. The farm turns out to be several farmhouses, half of a hamlet.

The extensive renovations needed to the farm houses, which Midge finds herself in charge of managing and financing, and Yves' obsession with the idea of his being a great painter, a "genius", is balanced somewhat by Midge's developing friendship with a supportive and sympathetic neighbor, Jeanne.

Jeanne is in her late 60s, cannot read or write, never used a telephone, does not have television, has never traveled to the ocean that is not far away, and has been working all her life without electricity or running water. Jeanne however becomes a protector to Midge, an American who does not know the ways of rural Brittany.

The memoir describes days in Brittany with its difficulties, its disappointments, its successes, as well as the joy of good friendship. The book really tells two stories - the story of an American artist in France transformed by her experience there, and the life story of Jeanne, a simple Breton woman.

Of Jeanne, the author wrote:



"Like a messenger heralding her arrival, her low starched white lace coif revealed her to be a Morbihanaise. Everyone greeted her; she struck up a conversation with everyone."

The memoir also tells how these two helped each other and how in the end, Midge feels regret and wonders if different decisions along the way might have made the final outcomes any different.

Marjorie Price writes with the eye of the artist, with detail and a love of color. Her descriptions of her painting and of landscape easily transport you to Brittany, its farms, coastline, and the feel of its people.


"In summer, the heat was so intense it was a streak of fire on my back and soaked up the moisture on the paper, making it difficult to work with the transparency and fluidity of watercolor. But on cool days, or on days when the fog lingered and moisture hung in the air, I could blend the light of the morning mist with the emerging sun, lay color over color like a theme in a fugue that fades as another unfolds...." - (ch. 15)

I recommend this heart-warming book for its story, its descriptions of people and place, and its exploration of relationships, some that "worked" and others that did not.

I have read A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle and Under the Tuscan Sun, enjoyed them, but had no real desire to read the follow up books that both authors wrote. A Gift from Brittany I found to be much more serious and realistic, and true, and very moving.

[Sarah Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This charming memoir recounts the author's experiences of an American woman living alone in the Breton countryside and her deep and life altering friendship with an elderly peasant woman. Originally purchased as a summer home, Midge finds herself living alone with her daughter in the Breton farmhouse when her marriage falls apart. Unexpectedly, this painter from Chicago forms a close bond with Jeanne, a peasant woman who has never travelled outside of her village. Although Midge eventually moves away, this period of her life and friendship changed her life for the better.

It was hard to read about the gradual breakdown of Midge's marriage from a passionate romance to an abusive relationship. Although they were both painters when they met, Yves unexpectedly begins to undercut Midge's painting. He first refers to her painting as just "a hobby" (50) but later explicitly forbids her from painting. Without further explanation, he tells her that "it is no longer possible" for her to continue painting. When he discovers that she has continued to paint in secret, he takes a machete to her paintings. Later, he becomes physically abusive but tells her that it is her fault for forcing him to act that way.

But at heart, this novel is not about her marriage, or its collapse, but about the impact of the countryside and Jeanne. It was remarkable to me that Jeanne, a woman who had never left her village or even seen the ocean, would be so receptive to an American who was so different from herself. For Midge, Jeanne represents kindness, a ceaseless work ethic and resourcefulness, and a constantly generous spirit. . "Watching her as she bustled around the fireplace and stove, I felt I was watching my mother as I remembered her when I was small, or how, as a child, I used to watch my grandmother putter around the kitchen. Sometimes it seemed I had stepped back in time so I might know her. I had left the present and was reliving a time that no longer existed, watching across the room an ancestor who I had loved more than anyone, past, present, or future" (238). It's also inspiring to see Jeanne go out of her comfort zone and allow Midge to take her on trips to see the ocean, to go out on a boat, and to sightsee in Paris - new and amazing experiences for an isolated peasant woman.

This was a simple, sweet read about the collide of two women's lives who represented two different worlds but yet found a way to bond and connect despite their differences.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely memoir about a friendship between a young mother from Chicago living in France in the 1960s and her 70 year old neighbor on a farm in Brittany. Beautiful descriptions of the countryside and way of life that painted a picture of how it was. Mostly, a poignant story of true friendship between an unlikely pair. This is the type of story we need to hear about to remind us that we can be friends with many people, even those with whom we seemingly have little in common.

[Sunni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very light, pleasant read. Not so much about her love story with her husband (always hard to imagine putting up with such brutish behavior...and it wasn't just because it was the 1960s); but her love story with the village and one motherly figure she meets there.

[Eden · Rating 4 out of 5]

2019 bk 245. I picked this up at a book sale and kept it for a day waiting while my car was being serviced (lightweight paperback, slightly larger print, non-glossy pages easier to read in the shops glaring lights). This is a heavy book. The premise is a young couple in love in the 1960's, marriage, a need for a place where both an paint as they are artists. They purchase half of a derelict village and in between painting, they repair the site and build a home, except something very dark looms. It is only thanks to the friends they make with the elderly neighbors that the author and her daughter survive the husband's very dark descent into mental illness. Among the final straws are when he takes an axe to a statue he had carved of Marjorie Price. This book shows a number of the darker elements of living in France, but still provides a sense of love for a region and a people. Marjorie has a large capacity for acceptance and understanding. And the book was the perfect length for a three and a half hour wait - I finished it just as they called my name, and I had to shake myself back into southern Indiana.

[Suzesmum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Review #7 “A Gift From Brittany: A Memoir of Love and Loss in the French Countryside” by Marjorie Price 📖🐚🐄 I picked this little gem out of the resort’s library last night, and what a treasure it was. In 1960, aged 28, the author left suburban middle class Chicago to pursue her dreams of becoming an artist in Paris. Falling in love with Yves at her first gallery exhibition, he convinced her to buy half a hamlet in Brittany. She quickly befriends Jeanne, the village matriarch and together they learn more about each others’ worlds. A delightful, touching and exquisitely rich story. With tinges of a “Year in Provence” and “Under The Tuscan Sun”, I loved every word ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️🇫🇷

[Layne Streuding · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 because of how personally special this book was to me living in this same area of France. Last week I drove an hour to the hamlet where the author lived for 10 years. The way Jeanne is described as the resilient French peasant woman whom the author depends on and is forever changed by makes me feel an aching loss for a time past, when neighbors needed to depend on each other and through that could build a true relationship. I recently attended a festival celebrating old traditions here in Brittany(Bretagne) of dress and dance… I was overwhelmed by how much it moved me. I feel like I was a part of this old culture in a past life.

[Debbe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love descriptive stories of people living abroad. This lovely story aptly describes this young artist’s experience living in Brittany in the 1960’s. Lots of challenges but the biggest success was in her friendship with an older woman neighbor. Their friendship was so strong and true. An endearing recollection that visually had me in France right along with the author.

[Nupura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a feel good novel. Really enjoyed it. It teaches you to be strong, value a person irrespective of cultural and financial backgrounds you share because you never know how important he/she will be in shaping your lives.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this delightful account of the time the author spent in rural Brittany in the 1960's and the special relationship she had with an elderly neighbor who helped her weather hardship.

[Faith EnYart · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely endearing story. Through the chapters, it feels like you're getting to know Jeanne personally. A bittersweet story that had me smiling till the end.

[Carolyn Sweet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book club pick. It held my interest but I can't rate it more than the 4 stars.

[Eileen Uihlein Donohue · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memoir and tribute to author's friend.

[Kati Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really hated it in the beginning. But when the book became what it’s actually about, it won me over.

[Faith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! It was so charming. Totally made me feel like I was living in Brittany too.

[Merilee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Touching and very interesting memoir of a woman who moved to Paris in 1960 to pursue her art, and where her life led following. Well written for a first book.

[Brenna Bonner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a tender memoir about a woman, her perseverance to live and paint on her own terms and an enduring friendship with an unlikely neighbor. Beautifully written.

[Leah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me.

[Sydney Willford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Randomly decided to pick this book up at a used bookshop, and am so glad that I did. Such an interesting book about the french countryside, love, loss, womanhood and art.

[Maddy MacLeod]

Such a delightful read

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Gift from Brittany is tagged as "A memoir of love and loss in the French Countryside." Although that is true, I do not think that the book is best described as such. This book is best classified as a (late blooming) coming-of-age memoir in the French Countryside.

Midge, a young artist in 1960, starts on a journey towards self-discovery the minute she lands in France. This journey is put on hold abruptly after her arrival, due to meeting and marrying an exciting and promising artist, the self-proclaimed "genius" Yves. Over the next few years Midge slowly and somewhat reluctantly begins to sacrifice bits of herself and her art for the sake of her husband and marital happiness.

One such sacrifice is the purchase of half a hamlet in Brittany. Now a mother and dutiful wife, Midge tries to make a home out of the aged stone structures among strangers. The going is rough, and Yves relegates Midge to the task of finishing the dwelling while he devotes his time to "his art." An unlikely friendship between Midge and Jeanne, a traditional and illiterate French peasant woman, proves the saving grace for Midge. With Jeanne's guidance and nurturing friendship Midge eventually learns to trust herself despite her difficult circumstances and begins to once again take control of her life, returning to art and making peace with her past.

The last portion of the book is a sweet homage to Jeanne and the friendship that so sustained Midge.

My favorite exchange between Midge and Jeanne occurs after Yves forbids Midge to paint and Jeanne gives her permission to hide her art in Jeanne's stable:

"'We'll put them in a box on the shelf with the chickens. They'll be safe there.' She put down her knitting and frowned. 'But painting pictures is what you do. Didn't you once tell me you always did it, even when you were little?'

'I can't remember when I didn't paint. But he feels too strongly about it.'

'It's not right. No one ought to clip the wings off a bird.'"

[Joje · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am enjoying this book, even if I know Brittany fairly well, because it is from an earlier time than I know it. And of course, there's a little voice in the back of my head saying it in French, as she writes it in English, which is probably how she lives, too. The telling is effective and easy to follow, and I am particularly caught in the question of how it comes out with her husband. In fact the relation to that husband was being described very well until she moved back to the old house to avoid his rages. At my present place in the book, however, he is rarely mentioned, so I worry about him back in Paris with his condition, or maladie. I know she cared about him and kept track somehow with how he was doing, but why is she not telling us at least tidbits. Knowing the French system as I do, I am fairly certain that he is either getting into big trouble or else getting very effective care (or less effective, since care for mental illness is only now beginning to reach a higher level, as high as the medical care). If she is saving that information for a later chapter, it still makes me suspicious, since it LOOKS as if she didn't really care to find out, even if through his agent or his family. But no, we are only following how she is doing in the village, which is a very positive, pleasant tale, that's certain.

[Terra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a compelling memoir, of the author's ten years living in France, first in Paris and then in a tiny village. She is an artist who married an artist and this is more interesting than the typical "how I refurbished a stone cottage" story of life in a remote village. Her struggles to paint when her husband forbade her and her deep friendship with an older lady, Jeanne, are at the heart of this story.
There are 4 themes: her marriage, at times passionate and troubled. Moving to the village. Her closeness with Jeanne. The heartbreak of endings: her marriage, moving from the village, leaving Jeanne behind, moving to Italy and later to the USA. A question arose for me, is the name she uses in this memoir for her husband his actual name? I looked him up on the internet and there is no trace of him. She wrote about him making him sound like his paintings are brilliant.

[Monika · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just wanted to say that this book is great!
This should really be on the top sellers list!! It is going down in my list of top books.
I really felt for the lead character Marjorie, and feel as though the memory of the hamlet, and Jeanne will stay with me forever.
All of the main characters in this book had such strong roles, and were so memorable.
This book is also very positive in the fact that as soon as the lead character's husband became a jerk, she stood up for herself in the way that felt right at the time, and she learned alot about herself, and what she wants in life.

I would reccomend this book to anyone who needs a little step back from their lives and needs a little step back from their own worlds to travel to this little hamlet, and the "old country" world.

[Mike Debaptiste · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book about the remote French countryside in Brittany. In 1960 a young Midge leaves home and family in Chicago to go to Paris to paint. She meets a charismatic young French beatnik artist, falls in love, marries him, and they eventually move to a summer place in remote Brittany where she meets an older woman, Jeanne, with whom she establishes a life-time friendship. This book is a tribute to the woman Jeanne, and I fell madly in love with her instantly- reminded me of my peasant 'Grandma M' from the hills of Cambopasso in Italy. Lots of great reading about Paris in the Sixties, the turbulence of the Seventies, art, painting, bohemian characters, the country peasants, the viccisstudes of Life, and, most of all, the woman Jeanne, a character you're not likely to forget.

[Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in the summer and loved the uncomfortable true story of an American artist who takes herself to France at a time when young women did NOT do this kind of thing. She meets up with a French artist who, of course, makes her subsume her own art for supporting him and his. When she finds herself the owner of an old farm in Brittany she learns to communicate with an old woman from the area who speaks a local dialect and they can't speak anything in common. But somehow through the friendship Price survives and works on her own art and jettisons the nasty Frenchman. My favorite part, besides her eventually resilience and coming into her own as an artist is the developing friendship between two women in worlds and times apart.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir focuses on a specific time in Price's life when she was in her twenties, moving from Chicago to Paris in the 1960s. She meets and marries a Frenchman and they divide their time between their home in Paris and a farm (half a hamlet, to be exact) in the French countryside. Price writes of her disintegrating marriage but burgeoning friendship with her neighbor, an elderly, uneducated woman named Jeanne. Price's story is a perfect example of the alchemy of an out-of-the-ordinary friendship producing extraordinary happiness. The book is a simple but poignant story of love and loss but also everlasting gains.