La Vie: A year in rural France

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It reminded me all over again of why I threw up everything for the magic of La Belle France' Carol Drinkwater, author of The Olive Farm An utterly beguiling immersion in La France Profonde, keenly observed and beautifully told' Felicity Cloake, author of One More Croissant for the Road In this book, he describes a year on his farm, the birdsong, the wildlife, the crops, the villagers and some of the nuances of French culture, all in his beguiling, poetic style. La Vie, According to Rose, Lauren Parvizi’s debut novel, is a compelling tale of grief, self-discovery, and new beginnings.

Sometimes rural France is older still. While we were house-hunting and renting the mill in the hedged bocage of northern Deux-Sevres the birdsong was of medieval intensity. Here, in our corner of woods and arable fields in eastern Charente-Maritime, we are at Renaissance level.Everyone who is British living in France profonde utters, as axiomatic, ‘France is like the Britain of our childhood’, by which they mean, depending on their certain age, the 1950s or the 1970s or 1990s. There are advantages in having a solid, intellectual reference point for political discussion, both for leaders and for the citizenry. It is inconceivable, for instance, that France should have threatened what Kedward terms its ethnic and religious "plurality" (within a secular state in which all citizens are theoretically equal) by illegally invading a republic whose citizens are predominantly Muslim. Apart from the nationalism of the extreme right, a poisonous vein that haemorrhages every so often (as in the visceral anti-semitism of Vichy, or Jean-Marie Le Pen's freak defeat of the popular socialist premier Lionel Jospin in the presidential elections of 2003), it is quite clear that almost all the events and actions and turning points in Kedward's superb account have reason and argument behind them: those involved must justify themselves as republicans - or non-republicans. They are always held to account. Ever since I bought a house in rural France I have been attracted to this sort of guidepost book; my ignorance of France is not quite total, but there are innumerable blanks to fill. Sometimes a knowledgeable foreigner is best-placed to describe and explain the cultural differences in his adopted country. I feel enriched, bit by bit, by descriptions of food, custom, terroir, language and manners as interpreted by a sensitive and observant insider/outsider.

Lewis-Stempel’s best book in an age; my favourite, certainly, since Meadowland. I’m featuring it in a summer post because, like Peter Mayle’s Provence series, it’s ideal for armchair travelling. Especially with the heat waves that have swept Europe this summer, I’m much happier reading about France or Italy than being there. The author has written much about his Herefordshire haunts, but he’s now relocated permanently to southwest France (La Roche, in the Charente). He proudly calls himself a peasant farmer, growing what he can and bartering for much of the rest. La Vie chronicles a year in his quest to become self-sufficient. It opens one January and continues through the December, an occasional diary with recipes. Don’t get me started on her sisters, especially Lily. Actually, let me rephrase that. Don’t get me started on her Mom. Goodness gracious, they were all unbearable and Rose definitely should’ve cut all ties. It’s an unhealthy dynamic all around that clearly is serving nobody. The most dramatic shift in society and culture is the post-war, post-colonial "transformation of France from rural to urban" - the ending of a traditional, still Catholic-based society in "a choreography of affluence": consumerism, in other words, happening in the context of a multicultural, globally porous environment which France is doing its best to accommodate. This marvellous book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand why the survival of the French republic is more than one country's concern.I first heard of Lewis-Stempel through my subscription to The Times newspaper. He writes some of the nature watch pieces. The idiom is so widely recognized that it titles various works in popular culture. In 1965, duo Sonny & Cher released “Sing c’est la vie” while the band Stereophonics came out with their own “C’est La Vie” in 2015.

Kedward quite rightly calls French education "the main vector of a unifying culture", consciously asserting the risks of losing what was so painfully and often violently fought for. The French are acutely aware (this is part of their anti-Americanism) of the difference between their enlightenment republic and the far more powerful version across the Atlantic - for the cause of which France bankrupted itself before its own revolution: America kept religion, enabling a return in recent years to the worst period of messianic empire-building and the assertion of an aggressive individualism which excludes the poor. For the French republic is also the interventionist state - thanks in part to the solid strength of the communists among the working class as well as among writers and intellectuals before and after the war: hospitals are excellent, trains run on time, city centres are relatively clean and civilised (though media-bloated insécurité has become a recent obsession). Economic liberalism, and France's various recessions, now threaten one of the most cherished values of the republic: to care materially for its citizens.

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Is it possible to move to another country to escape unhappiness and defeat? The protagonist, Rose Zadeh, is a people pleaser. Rose puts the demands of her family, job, and anyone who asks for anything before her own needs. “NO” is not in her vocabulary, and when she is disappointed and not rewarded for her efforts and help, Rose decides to use her three-week vacation to go to Paris to find her dreams.

His writing has an eternal feel. Even when writing about man, he writes about an ancient rhythm of life. This is not a book about the fast-paced modernity most of us live in. Lewis-Stempel described himself as perhaps the last religious nature writer. His faith, as well as a yearning for a way of life lost even in the depths of rural Herefordshire (England), are clear to see. Life and death are dealt with beautifully. British nature writer John Lewis-Stempel is a man who takes birdsong seriously. In the Preface to this book, he highlights the song of nightingales as a reason to relocate to rural France. As a sort of Afterward, he compiles a list of all of the birds see on his own patch at La Roche in the Charente region. Throughout the novel, he notes which birds are singing; and just occasionally, those brief times in the annual calendar when there is seemingly no birdsong at all. How many times can a person loose keys or phones in a three week period, according to this once a week on average. How many times will a woman not use her good sense to figure a way out of said predicament but rather phone it in, again three times on average. And for good measure most of those phone calls will be to a smarmy con man named KID. And Rose is too stupid to notice he’s a con. But the signs were slapping her in the face constantly. John Lewis-Stempel has permanently moved to France and become a self-sufficient farmer in the Charente region, living in extremely rural France or “la France Profonde”. The deepest division is not just between "right" and "left", as it was until recently in Britain, but between revolutionary and counter-revolutionary, secular Jacobin and Catholic royalist, still impassioned by the legacy of the revolution. Only recently has consensus, along with non-party issue politics and both localised and European campaigns, blurred the divide - the symbolic moment being perhaps the sinking of the Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior by the French secret services under a socialist government in 1985.

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Kedward is careful, however, to indicate the failures and hypocrisies of this position, showing how many can be excluded from the notion of égalité - including women, unable to vote until 1945, and immigrant workers living in appalling suburban shanty towns in the 60s. For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned once again to live in a landscape where turtle doves purr and nightingales sing, as they did almost everywhere in his childhood. He wanted to be self-sufficient, to make his own wine and learn the secrets of truffle farming. And so, buying an old honey-coloured limestone house with bright blue shutters, the Lewis-Stempels began their new life as peasant farmers.