A Good Year by Peter Mayle

There is nowhere else in the world when you can keep busy doing so little and enjoying it so much.
A Good Year is an easy read about an Englishman inheriting a run-down house and vineyard in southern France. All the stock characters are there: a reluctant Englishman in the shadow of his eccentric late uncle, his wine-buff friend visiting from London, an elegant female notaire, a mysterious man tending the vines who knows more than he’s saying, a young American girl fresh from Napa Valley, an eccentric cleaner and a local love interest. Despite humorous twists and turns, all ends happily in a haphazard yet predictable way but it is lightweight and fun and Max has some good chat-up lines along the way. Peter Mayle writes with authority on la belle vie and I enjoyed it as much as his collection of essays: Bon Appetit!
Just back from Bordeaux, I savoured his descriptions of the city:
He was particularly taken by the elegance and human scale of the eighteenth-century buildings… He admired the architectural set pieces – the Place de la Bourse, the Esplanade des Quinconces, the Grand Theatre, the fountains and statues – and he delighted in the tranquil surface of the broad, slow-flowing Garonne.
The film, although beautifully shot around sunny vineyards in the loveliest of settings, is really disappointing in comparison. The novel is much more entertaining.