Notes from the Cévennes : Half a Lifetime in Provincial France

by Adam Thorpe

Adam Thorpe's home for the past 27 years has been an old house in the lower Cevennes, a wild range of mountains in southern France that forms part of the Massif Central. In his writing Thorpe has explored this area, drawing on the legends, history and above all the people of this part of France for his inspiration. He has reflected on hunting, Brexit, French nationalism, ecology, religion, hippyism, the French Resistance and wartime collaborators. In this book, Thorpe takes up these themes, writing at fuller length about his surroundings, the village and his house at the heart of it, as well as the contrasts of city life in nearby Nimes. In particular he is interested in how the past leaves impressions, marks on our landscape and on us. What do we find in the grass, earth and stone beneath our feet and in the objects around us? How do they tie us to our forebears? What traces have been left behind and what marks do we leave now?

He finds a fossil imprinted in the single worked stone of his house's front doorstep, discovers Roman tiles in the Gallo-Roman foundations, explores the attic once used as a silk factory (the area's main source of income before synthetic fabrics), ponders mutilated fleur-de-lys (French Royalist symbols) in the hinges of his study door, finds a priest-hole in his study and the graves of two sisters in the garden and excavates a lance-tip from the Camisard wars.

Then there are the personal fragments that make up a life and a family history, memories dredged up by `dusty toys, dried-up poster paints, a painted clay lump in the bottom of a box.' Part celebration of rustic France, part personal memoir, Thorpe's humorous and precise prose demonstrates a wonderful stylist at work, recalling books such as Notes from an Odd Country by Geoffrey Grigson and the travel writing classic Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes by Robert Louis-Stevenson.

Genres: Travel, France, Nonfiction, Memoir, British Literature, Autobiography

256 pages, Hardcover

Published May 3, 2018

About the author

Adam Thorpe is a British poet, novelist, and playwright whose works also include short stories and radio dramas.

Adam Thorpe was born in Paris and grew up in India, Cameroon, and England. Graduating from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1979, he founded a touring theatre company, then settled in London to teach drama and English literature.

His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won great critical acclaim worldwide, including that of novelist John Fowles, who reviewed it in The Guardian, calling it "(...) the most interesting first novel I have read these last years". The novel was awarded the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for 1992.

Adam Thorpe lives in France with his wife and three children.

-Wikipedia

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the past quarter of a century, Adam Thorpe has lived in an old house in the Cévennes, a range of mountains just north of Montpellier in southern France. He moved to France in 1990 and it was there he wrote Ulverton, a book about 300 years of history of a village in England.

Even though he is English, he was born in Paris and lived all over the place before settling in this region of France and his writing is a more thoughtful and considered approach to life abroad. He takes a long-term view of the place he has chosen to live. He celebrates the good parts of life there, and being a full resident feels that he has earned the right to critique it too.

I haven’t read Ulverton yet, but have read On Silbury Hill a few years ago. Like that book, it is a careful blend of memoir, history, and observation of the people that he has chosen to live with. He chose to move to France knowing that on an author’s salary, he would never be able to afford anywhere in the UK. The plan of buying a plot of land and a rambling farmhouse was scaled back to a house in a village.

The village they chose is very old, most of the buildings still there were erected in the medieval period and the landscape around still has the terraces visible that were used for growing crops in times past. It is a place that comes alive in the spring as orchids, wild garlic and numerous other wildflowers turn the grey slopes a psychedelic riot of colour.

The house they live in has layers of history that are visible in the architecture and tiny details that he learns about from his neighbours about how it was used. The region suffered a lot from poverty people went barefoot to save wearing out their shoes and stripped the hillsides of all timber for fuel.

The house they have bought reveals many things as they change and adapt it to their modern needs, they find long shallow grooves in the back stonework and a neighbour shows him demonstrate how knives were sharpened as they headed out for a day’s work. In a more sinister note, they find a witchcraft poppet. This is for the owner to cast spells over someone else. He returns it to where it was found and covers it again.

The families that live in the village have been there for millennia too. Thorpe learns much about the complexity of relationships even in this tiny village. There is a chapter on the rivalries between the two families and the long-running dispute they have had. He learns to tread carefully when asking about the history of the place.

I really liked this. It is not the story of someone fortunate enough to be able to afford a second home in a nice part of France, rather it is the observations of someone who is completely committed to the place they have chosen to live. His gentle and sensitive prose is a gentle meander around this village and like his other non-fiction book, is a blend of memories, history and current events, jostling for your attention. If there was one flaw, and this is only a minor one, it felt a little disjointed at times. It was reading the acknowledgements though that I found that this is a collection of articles that he wrote for the TLS, re-edited and bought together for this book. I personally would have preferred to have known that as I read each chapter.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The novel is built up in chronological layers, each bleeding into the other. A palimpsest, where time’s previous scribbles remain visible. Our house turned out to be the same, consisting of three formerly separate but now interleaved dwellings whose thick walls finally opened up to each other after yielding grudgingly to our Macon’s meaty drill. The drawings of Escher come to mind.”

This paragraph, taken from a chapter called ‘Gossamer Threads’, is representative of this essay collection in a number of ways. It’s a memoir built up in layers, sometimes in seemingly random fashion. Because the essays have been written over a period of 25 or so years - the final essay and the Epilogue reference both the Brexit vote and the climate changes in the Cevennes - it lacks a centre, or perhaps more so a clear narrative thread. (Archaeology, history, and local personalities are recurring motifs.) It took me close to a year to read this book; I would pick it up each time I visited my house in France, but I never read it with any particular feeling of urgency. However, if you are wanting to learn about life in the French countryside, the author clearly knows his subject well and I would certainly recommend this book to you.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Books from authors who are ex-pats and move to France or Italy might be my favorite genre. No other countries, for some reason, only those two. That being said, this book was good when kept to the stories that actually happened to him and his family but veered into pretentiousness when the story was about the history of the area or other matters. Sometimes I had to skip over large swaths of the book because I just wasn't interested in the Caves of Lascaux or whatever it was. But all in all, I liked it.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

An unpleasantly pretentious way of expressing oneself as mere means of saying "I have nothing to say".

[Jacqueline McNeil · Rating 1 out of 5]

No, Mr Thorpe. You cannot compare your peacetime privileged upbringing and boarding school education with the horrors of WW1. On top of his disdain for the country he has chosen to dump himself on, this was enough for me.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Notes from the Cévennes: Half a Lifetime in Provincial France. I like the full title of this book as it helps you understand immediately that the warm affection that the author has for this region and its people is based on many years of living there and bringing up a family. It is in no way smug or superior as many of these biographical books can be. Adam Thorpe has a poetic writing style, a style which I normally find difficult to read and don't especially enjoy but I very much enjoyed his descriptions of flora and fauna of the region and his way of looking at everyday places, buildings and object to feel the tendrils of history reaching us in the present day. His descriptions of the people and their way of life also shows how the past connects with today and the fondness that he has for them is always on show, along with the gentle humour and teasing that comes with familiarity. A wonderful book.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this: it's based on freelance articles already published for the most part, so quite wide-ranging. Family life in the south of France, not sure whether ex-pat/immigrant is quite the word here as the author although English was born in France and holds dual nationality (something which lightens the horror of Brexit a little for him and hs family). Describes his village and the area with respect and affection. I particularly liked the protest at the possible loss of the post office (the French seem to be very good at this sort of thing), and the happy memory the description of the Pont du Gard brought back for me (I got on the top of this ca. 1990. I was surprised at the time that this was allowed and can quite see why it no longer is, but I am really glad I did it while it was still possible, albeit at the cost of scraped knees scrambling up through the holes which gave access to the completely unprotected flat top). Adam Thorpe has lived in his village, and lived and worked in neighbouring Nimes, since 1990, and has a lively sense of history.

[Louise Davy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my kind of book; well-written, astute observations, about a region in France where the author has lived for half a lifetime. I was unaware of Adam Thorpe as an author but I will now search out Ulverton (fiction) and On Silbury Hill (non-fiction). I note he is poet and has many fiction titles too.
In a gentle reflection Thorpe tells of the minor dramas of an everyday life living in a foreign region as he and his family become part of the landscape.
I loved this and recommend it to any readers who like transporting themselves elsewhere and to those who enjoy memoir.

[Mackay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having just returned from the Ardeche/Cevennes area, I was keen to "revisit" and learn more. This seemed like the perfect book, since ex-pat experiences in France are a subgenre all their own and can be delightful and informative, and Mr. Thorpe is a poet of some note. Alas, for this reader, these Notes were dry and scattered and not to my taste.

[R.G. Ziemer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good book, fun and interesting to read. Full of history, character, and local color through the (sometimes) understated and witty prose of expatriate Englishman THorpe. I feel well-prepared for my trip to the Cevennes, and many misconceptions squared away in advance. I want to go to there.

[Morgan Blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of stories of living in Provence had so much promise. Alas, with little to no comment on the author himself or his family, I felt I didn’t know them any better at the end than I did at the end. Chronologically scattered and often very dry; attempts at lessons in history and geology not best matched with my hope of a cosy, warm retreat into the south of France.

[Anna Bennett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, you can tell that Thorpe is a poet. It reminded me a bit of W.B. Seabald. It made more sense to me when I realised that the chapters were originally published as a column in the Times Literary Supplement.

[Paul Johnston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I didn't think I would get into this, let alone finish it, but finish it I did. Englishman living in France, a collection of chapters, each one about a different thing that happened. As others note, it can come across a bit pompous and poetic at times. A solid 3 stars but nothing higher.

[Gabi Coatsworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt like traveling to France, but we can’t just now, so this was one way to do it. The author can be pompous sometimes, but I liked being abroad for a while...

[Jonathan Freeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable book but no wow factor

[Cormac Healy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable look at an Englishman making a life in rural France. Particularly pleasing as I read it whilst in rural France enjoying myself immensely.

[Mickey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aptly named - notes on a life in a quiet rural town; an enjoyable read.

[Leonie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, interesting and beautifully written sketch of half a lifetime lived in rural France.

[Reading · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oddly dull about a very interesting part of France

[Cath Barton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great preamble to my upcoming trip to the Cevennes, via Nimes!

[CeeJayBee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well written, witty and I really connected with some of the characters. Don’t read this book you’re looking for Peter Mayle. Read it because it’s by Adam Thorpe.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. What a interesting life he has had in France. I loved the local characters, the local tales and the folklore and the stories about his house were fascinating. Other than a snarky comment about Mallorca, which as a Mallorcaphile, I found unforgivable, I liked the author and the book. I may even read his first novel Ulverton.

[Piisa]

A pleasant up-sticks read over the midsummer holiday. Slow.