Cloudy day reading

Cloudy days can come as a surprise in Provence. Cerulean blue is the usual outlook, despite the knowledge that winters can be harsh. But when the vineyard down the hill takes on these soft grey tones, it means a perfect afternoon for reading.

There’s nothing I like more than a book trail, where one leads on to another, linked in some way. Recently I’ve read three books about the Cévennes, that isolated and  mountainous region on the other side of the stately Rhone to the north-west of Avignon. Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879) is Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic account of a 120-mile walking trip he made alone with the obdurate donkey Modestine. It’s one of his earliest works, and its enduring popularity is surely to do with his wonderful descriptions of the landscape:

 It was already warm. I tied my jacket on the pack, and walked in my knitted waistcoat.  Modestine herself was in high spirits, and broke of her own accord, for the first time in my experience, into a jolting trot that set the oats swashing in the pocket of my coat. The view, back upon the northern Gévaudan, extended with every step; scarce a tree, scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning. A multitude of little birds kept sweeping and twittering about my path (…), translucent flickering wings between the sun and me.

The other two books are much more recent. Both are novels in which descriptive writing about the countryside is equally lyrical and accomplished.

Trespass by Rose Tremain is a tale as brooding as the peaks and dark valleys she describes. It’s a novel about the outsiders who arrive in the Cévennes, searching for a paradise that exists partly in their own imaginations, and in collusion with each other. A British brother and sister, Anthony and Veronica Verey, begin a search for his perfect new life close to where she lives with her partner, Kitty. They are mirrored by the French owners of the property they fix on, Aramon Lumel and his sister Audrun, whose relationship is as fissured as the large crack in the old family farmhouse he makes a bodged attempt to hide. The dreamy, tragic air of the novel fuses perfectly the contrast between illusion and reality, until it acquires the quality of a fable from La France profonde.

The Tapestry of Love by Rosy Thornton is also beautifully written, building a sensuous picture of the Cévennes, from the dampness of granite flagstones, to the “layer upon layer of blue mountain silhouettes, fading into bluer skies”. Again, it concerns the search for a rural idyll, but Catherine Parkstone, although not so very much younger than Tremain’s Veronica Verey, seems a more contemporary and believable heroine, as she sets about overcoming the nasty surprises and setbacks inherent in beginning a new life abroad - and perhaps even a new relationship. Catherine is a properly-rounded and sympathetic character, who easily engages our affection. Though less of a novel of ideas than Trespass, it is in some ways the more enjoyable for it.