SOURCE: "All That Sunshine," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4595, April 26, 1991, p. 21.

Thorpe is an educator, Whitbread Prize-winning poet, playwright, and short story writer who was born in Paris. Below, he offers a negative review of Toujours Provence.

These anecdotes [in Toujours Provence] from Peter Mayle's bucolic exile purport to continue where A Year in Provence left off. A former advertising copywriter, Mayle has a sure eye for the marketable product. Title is all-important: Caesar's Vast Ghost might do for Lawrence Durrell, but not for the sales pitch. Brits salivate at the thought of doing up a property. Add hedonism, sunlight, all those elements denied on a rain-swept northern island, and you have a runaway bestseller on your hands. A Year in Provence implies the sabbatical, not exile. Toujours Provence says here is more of the same, and it will always be there anyway. The first book won...