Lot Blog 3

I mentioned in blog no 1 that Amanda Lawrence was publishing a book on the Quercy: White Stone Black Wine. This is now released and available.

It is a delightful account of the Lawrence family's decision to move to the Lot for good, and the initial problem of purchasing a bigger house (swiftly accomplished in fact) and then settling into the community they would come to call home. Post-Mayle this has become a popular genre of writing with some very average writers getting in on the act.

Where Lawrence scores head and shoulders above the others - including Mayle, in my opinion - is that she can write, and, if it just occasionally a touch self-conscious, never is she on firmer ground that when writing about food and related topics, where her evident passion for the subject spills out in endlessly evocative descriptions of markets and the time-consuming obsession with food, in all its guises, that is still a feature of Quercy/Lot life and culture.

When Lawrence visits a market she transports you with her. You can feel the strength of the sun on your shoulders, be newly excited by the enticing displays of fruit and the strange varieties of vegetables and taste your reward of a post-shopping pastis in the café.

Another way in which Lawrence scores over Mayle is that the apparent condescension towards the locals that was, I felt, so evident in his books - where it seemed his neighbours were being unwittingly exploited for literary/financial purposes- is nowhere to be seen. Lawrence, by contrast, writes with respect and affection of her neighbours while still managing to convey how bizarre some of their customs, and how incomprehensible their accent, seemed to her British eyes and ears at first.

Her ability to slot so apparently effortlessly into Quercy life may not be so surprising. Lawrence quickly took up the challenge of entertaining her new friends in the manner to which they were already accustomed, tackling the making of pâté's, the eviscerating of birds, the salting of hams, the preparation of pickles (not such a success with the French, she reports), the pots of jams and jellies, with a lack of squeamishness and also with an evident accomplishment that indicates she was clearly a Lot peasant in another life, even if she does draw the line at preserving haricots verts and bottling tomatoes.

The book is about more than food, though. It is a pot pourri of Quercy anecdotes, a Quercy tapas of different tastes; delving into subjects as diverse as Eleanor of Aquitaine, or Aliénor as she would have been in the Quercy (and as some I know, still are), the annual wine bacchanal in Albas, the winter truffle market of Limogne, or simply walking into the nearest village on an orchid trail.

Some of these anecdotes are slight, perhaps, but it doesn't seem to matter because she does them so well. You are bathed in the lazy art de vivre of rural France. They are quotidian snapshots of her life, amuse-gueules that add up to a six course meal of sights, sounds and impressions of the Quercy in all its loveliness, a feel-good book that leaves you smiling and a tad wistful and wanting more.

How could I fail to enjoy it, therefore? Buy it! You will too.