A YEAR IN PROVENCE by Peter...

A YEAR IN PROVENCE by Peter Mayle, illustrated by Judith Clancy (Vintage: $10. In the late 1980s, Peter Mayle and his wife left London to pursue their dream of living in a refurbished 18th-Century farmhouse in a small town in Southern France: This charming memoir chronicles their first year in the remote country of the Luberon. Unlike many expatriates, the Mayles liked and respected the local people and quickly adopted their attitudes about life and work. This willingness to adapt enabled them to keep a sense of humor when the various contractors’ mysterious delays threatened to turn the cement mixer into a permanent feature of the garden. Mayle revels in the beauties of the Provencal landscape, even when the savage Mistral winds bend the trees double. He also celebrates the regional food in mouth-watering detail, and after finishing his descriptions of “the kind of meal that the French take for granted and tourists remember for years,” the reader feels an overwhelming urge to go out and give the nearest McDonald’s a swift kick.