A charming look at the history, landscape and people of rural France, told through the eyes of a Parisian-born Englishman, writer and poet
Adam Thorpe is a bestselling novelist, non-fiction writer and poet. His recent book On Silbury Hill (2014) was Radio 4's Book of the Week and received wide praise. He has published many novels, including Ulverton (1992), now a Vintage Classic, and numerous collections of poetry. Adam was born in France, brought up in India, Cameroon and England and now lives in southern France, between the Cevennes and Nimes.
In an altogether different class ... beautifully written, full of
wisdom about the balance struck by humanity and the natural world
... Adam Thorpe, a self-described "curator of time", has written a
grand little book. I might have added that no holidaymaker this
year in France, or further afield, should be without it. But why
wait until July or August? Don't postpone the treat. Buy now; this
book is a real joy. * The Tablet *
A marvellously astute, wry and affectionate account of France and
the French - mercifully free of whimsy - and, moreover, written in
pitch-perfect English prose. A delight. * William Boyd *
Part history and part memoir, Notes from the Cevennes is a
marvellous evocation of the forgotten Languedoc, and an
affectionate portrait of a country and a people. * Sigrid Rausing,
Editor of Granta *
Thorpe continues ... quietly wonderful. Though (and perhaps
because) Thorpe lives in France, he is alert to every English
linguistic twitch, every slippery folk-meme. He's a writer's
writer. * Hilary Mantel (on Thorpe's novel Missing Fay; TLS Books
of the Year, 2017) *
A powerful story of cooperation and conflict, both between
ourselves and Nature. Living in two places, the ancient pastoral
retreat of the Cevennes, and the Roman cosmopolitanism of Nimes,
Adam has all the gifts of novelist, correspondent, historian and
poet. * Colin Greenwood, Radiohead *
His novels are concerned with how the past and the present, reality
and fiction elide into each other, particularly through landscape;
and Thorpe, in this series of tightly controlled, involving
vignettes, finds evidence of this everywhere he looks ... Gleaming
with polished insights, this sensitive book is both a warning, plea
and salutary reminder that even the tiniest action affects the
universal. France profonde, indeed. * Spectator *
Erudite and beguiling * The Times *
Thorpe has dizzying range as well as style * Daily Mail *
[A] deeply engaging book, part chatty memoir, part profound
perception of the evidence of previous human existences ... He has,
in short, lived a life to which he was not born but which he has
taken up and made his own, something many people dream about but
few are able to emulate * Times Literary Supplement *
Thorpe's memoir is not part of any herd. Nor does it belong in the
fast-and-loose category of potboilers about swapping English life
for continental idylls ... It is erudite, firmly embedded in its
own soil and yet evasive ... affectionate, appreciative and
perceptive * Observer *
Beautifully written and produced, a pure pleasure: learned and
attentive and rich in description and full of humour that is
genuinely affectionate without being remotely patronising * Irish
Times *
By turns comic and pensive, Notes from the Cevennes is an absorbing
and beautifully composed collection of vignettes, recording Adam
Thorpe's encounters, adventures and meditations over half a
lifetime in France ... Mr Thorpe captures so well the dark history
of France, the conflict of religion, politics and land * Country
Life *
This absorbing book is written in prose as bright and bracing as
the waters of the rivers in which Thorpe loves to swim. Despite the
warts-and-all picture, it made me want to pack my bags and head
south. * Literary Review *
Thorpe allows a sense of folk magic to permeate, and his characters
feel rustic in a timeless way because he transmits a real
appreciation of the wild and how humans justify our interactions
with other beasts ... A gentle homage to rural life. * New
Statesman *
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