Mirabelle Pickers

"Indisputably one of the most invigorating French writers."—John Taylor, Paths to Contemporary French Literature
 
 
 
Jacques Réda chooses the height of the plum-picking season to revisit – on an old motorbike – his home town in Lorraine, north-eastern France. The fragrant allure of mirabelles introduces a colourful mix of old acquaintances renewed in these five days and vividly remembered places that have shaped a lifetime’s writing.
 
With its reflections, often whimsical, on the passing of the years, and its varied motifs – the plums, the provincial stillness, the toy soldiers of his childhood, ‘the astonishing existence of others’ first discovered as a love-struck schoolboy – this has few rivals as a portrayal of town life in la France profonde, written with tenderness and humour.