SOURCE: "Ah, Provence!," in The Christian Science Monitor, July 31, 1990, p. 13.

In the following excerpt, Pratt describes A Year in Provence as interesting and informative, but not necessarily realistic.

Idyllic places—and most visitors think that Provence, in the south of France, qualifies—are difficult to write about. All too often the prose turns to gushing about the wonder and charm of it all. The best travel writing takes a picture of a place with a longer lens. Get up too close to a paradise and you can't see it clearly….

Mayle, who is British, bought an old house in the Luberon Valley,… and he and his wife spent a year restoring it.

The book [A Year in Provence] is divided into month-long chapters. Mayle writes about the horrors of French bureaucracy, tells tales of amusing country contractors and dapper pool designers, musical plumbers, and clever plasterers. You see...