La Vie: A year in rural France

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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. 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.

Lauren Parvizi, the author of “La Vie, According to Rose,” has written a provocative, memorable, and heartfelt novel. The genres for this book are fiction, women’s fiction, and contemporary. I love how the author vividly describes her dramatically flawed characters as complex and complicated. Emotionally, my reaction was screaming and shaking some selfish characters. In life, there are givers and takers. In this book, the author discusses the importance of self-worth, finding and accepting oneself, second chances, finding a balance, and the importance of family and friends. 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. 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. La Vie, According to Rose, Lauren Parvizi’s debut novel, is a compelling tale of grief, self-discovery, and new beginnings. I loved the plot of this book, although it did feel a little long when listening to it. Again, that could just be because of my dwindling attention span, but while I did enjoy the art heist aspect, it didn’t seem necessary. The story would’ve been better rounded out if our protagonist’s relationship with Marco, a childhood acquaintance, was the core plot point. Kid, Rose’s Paris fling, could’ve still been included in the story, but rather as another American turned Parisian simply guiding her throughout the city. It would’ve kept the jealousy trope that I, as an angst lover, always root for, relevant and balanced. In the grand scheme of it all, even when we learn about the details behind the great Parisian art heist, it seemed very anticlimactic. The consequence of it all just seemed very unrealistic.An utterly beguiling immersion in La France Profonde, keenly observed and beautifully told' Felicity Cloake, author of One More Croissant for the Road

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. I watch Jean-Francois make his way from the Boulangerie to the Maisonette de la Presse. A journey of fifty yards, but it takes Jean-Francois quarter of an hour. A former notary in his early seventies, Jean-Francois shakes hands or bisous five different men and women - France is the republic of handshakes and kisses - and exchanges greetings, gossip and news with them all. These same people then greet and talk with others in a slow, slow quadrille. 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. 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.

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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 Lewis-Stempel is a farmer of mediaeval heritage, with his family owning the same land for 700 years. But he has bought a house in the Charente region of France. This house comes with a potager, various farm buildings, and other accoutrements of a house built in rural France during the Belle Époque. The book recounts a year in his life: January-December. 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”.

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. He has moved with his family, dogs, and various animals. The aim is to reconnect with nature, to farm for the person rather than for money, and to become at least 50% self-sufficient by the end of the year. As for Rose’s character, I’m a little conflicted. As the oldest Zadeh sister, she’s a pathological people pleaser. I empathized with her, but there were many times when enough was enough. She didn’t stand up for herself until the very end of the novel and it made the pacing drag out too long only to feel rushed at the end. She let everyone walk all over her, and yes, I say let because, from her inner dialogue, it’s clear that this is a conscious decision. She believes that defending herself will ruffle too many feathers. 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.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. 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.