Archive for May, 2012

Once You Break

Posted: May 30, 2012 in Canada, Debra Martens, Reviews
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cover of Once You Break a Knuckle

Once You Break a Knuckle by D.W. Wilson has twelve stories and for that simple reason I will make twelve points in my review.

  1. This book is a must read. But it is not easy to read.
  2. The main characters are men. Men and boys, sons and fathers. Women are mostly someone to feel guilty about or someone to desire or someone who has run off and ruined your life.
  3. The title comes from Constable John Crease, who says it to Mitch Cooper: “Once you break a knuckle, he always said, you will break it again.” He says it to Mitch, who is his son Will’s best friend, on the night that he wants Mitch to persuade Will to get the hell out of Invermere. The stories are set in the Kootenay Valley of British Columbia.
  4. Will Crease is the first person narrator of “The Elasticity of Bone,” “Reception,” and “Don’t Touch the Ground.” The stories hop around in time. The first is when Will’s father beats him at judo just before going to Kosovo and the second is about his father’s return — about his father and his relationship with his father. The third is about bullying when they are young teens, and how his friend Mitch takes revenge on the bullies. In the Will stories, the repeating theme is that Will must get himself out of “Inverhole” and not waste his life as his RCMP father did. There is no mention of Will’s mother. Will’s stories are peppered with slogans on shirts, mugs, caps. Too much pepper for me.
  5. Two of the stories are interesting or confusing, depending on your alertness. When Mitch takes the stage in the third person story, “The Millworker,” we learn that Mitch, the son of the renowned naturalist Larry Cooper, has been encouraged to work with his hands. He is married to Andrea, whom he seems to have cheated on, and has a son of 17 who gets in trouble with the law. And the law is Constable Will Crease. Then Mitch tells another story, in first person: “Once You Break a Knuckle,” a story about the younger Mitch helping Will’s dad find Duncan, a lovelorn kid their age. Will is home from university and Mitch is building the house that is falling apart in “The Millworker.” Wilson, then, is giving us the two versions of Will’s future. In “The Millworker,” he marries Mitch’s sister, Ash, and becomes an RCMP Constable, and no longer speaks to Mitch. In the second, John Crease has a word with Mitch, and Mitch has a word with Ash, and they conspire to keep Will from his simple desire (girl, job) so that he can pursue his dream of going West to study writing.
  6. There are other characters in the book, including the non-human ones of cars.

    Every car is named. Interestingly, this kind of naming was mentioned as common to stories by boys in the Guardian yesterday. A cobalt 67 Camaro is restored by Bellows in “Sediment” (another story of bullying). In “Dead Road,” the narrator, Duncan, talks about Animal Brooks’ cobalt 67 Camaro. Even someone as car clueless as I am can see that the car helps define the character. Cool Camaros for tough guys, trucks for electricians and so on. This point is perhaps best made when Mitch’s brother Paul, who (possibly) shows up as the kid and electrician in training in “The Persistence,” has made for himself a prosperous business in a later story: “Mitch spotted his brother’s truck, a forty-five-thousand-dollar enviro-friendly bio-dieseled no-footprint half-ton.” Mitch and Paul don’t have much time for each other.

  7. By this time you might be thinking of Raymond Carver and Hemingway and whatever macho writer springs to your mind, but I am thinking of Alice Munro. Three examples. First, his use of voice. Here is Will’s father speaking, “Promotions, he told me, are a lot like blowjobs: easy to get if you’re willing to go somewhere dirty.” Second, for his fresh, short descriptions: “a beaver-toothed kid” and “earthworms he’d dangle like a set of keys.” Third, for the emotional punch. The last line of “Persistence”: “All the problems could wait.” Will seeing his father in pain: “…when I stood helpless in front of him, hands tensed at my sides, his eyes squinched shut and his jaw clamped and Jesus, what had this done to him.”
  8. Old man, rednecks, shithole, hicks, gun-toters, goody-goody, blitz – I read this language with envy. It is much easier to play it safe and use only words everyone can understand. Speaking of which, what is a “commie hat”? What is this recurring use of the word “gamed” (“Winch’s dad gamed with the cabbage-like smell of pulp”)? What does it mean to “never have the stones”? “She’s gone and cleaned” (not referring to housework)? Maybe using local language does have its pitfalls. What do you think?
  9. Kudos, though, for pushing “superhero” and “Vietnam” into verbs.
  10. Hey, Winch’s dad is watching Dr Who in “Valley Echo.”
  11. It took me a long time to read this book. I read Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting and Nick Hornby’s Slam while reading Once You Break a Knuckle. In comparison, they were easy to understand, fun to read.
  12. This book delivers a jolt much like the one you get coming out from shopping to the parking lot or car park and you see a guy with a baseball cap on backwards in spattered jeans standing with his hand on the door of a pick-up truck, and you’ve got your new office shoes in your hand and are looking forward to a bath to start the weekend, and the guy is shouting fuck phrases at a woman in a track jacket with a cigarette between her fingers as she unlocks her rusty car, a car that she might have picked up when your grandmother died and her things were all sold off. You watch them as your hand fumbles for the keys to your imported car. And then a smoker by the door of the building shouts at them to take it somewhere else and while they frown at him, you pass between them, through the fuck-smoked air, feeling as if you have gone out the wrong door and entered the Canada that doesn’t listen to the CBC. The guy gives up on the woman and calls to you and invites you for a couple beers. And you really miss the “of,” so you shake your head No and mutter to yourself, “a couple of beers.” Reading this book is like getting in the half-ton with him.

If you’ve read this far, then you might like to read about Wilson’s next book, Ballistics, here.

The Orange Prize for Fiction

Posted: May 23, 2012 in Canada, London
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Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan’s book shortlisted for 2012 Orange Prize

At the end of this month, the last winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction will be announced. The prize has been around since 1996, and is given to celebrate “excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world.” (Orange Prize website) The winner receives a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze figurine known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven. (What is the value of £30,000 today compared to 1996? Does that mean every year the winner gets less than the year before?)

The prize money comes from an anonymous endowment. That means the mobile services company, Orange, was funding the sponsorship of the prize (promotion, event etc.). Kate Mosse, the co-founder and honorary director of the Orange Prize for Fiction, is confident about finding a replacement sponsor: Interviewed by the Guardian, she said, “It’s very rare for a sponsorship like this to come onto the market – the investment generates something in the region of £17.5 million a year in advertising, and the cultural capital of the women’s prize for fiction is practically second to none. The potential is very exciting. … Over the last few days we’ve started to have informal conversations with companies, and as a result of going on the Today programme this morning to announce the end of Orange’s sponsorship, we’ve had more calls. Of course, I’ll be a happy woman when we’ve signed on the dotted line, but I feel pretty confident that this time next year it’ll be a bigger and better prize just with a different name over the door. Sponsorship is a marriage between the company and the prize, and it’s about finding the perfect match.”

Linda Grant, 2000 winner for When I Lived in Modern Times, explains that while the Orange prize has opened up the literary landscape to new writing, to stories that “existing prizes seemed wilfully to ignore,” the prize’s real value is in the financial support that it gives to writers: “Prizes are a product of a debate between judges sharing a common reading experience over a few months. What winning means is money: not money to buy a diamond ring, but to be able to push aside everything else that interferes with writing books. To give up the day job, say no to journalism or teaching; to see your advance for the next book increase, your foreign rights sales grow; to be translated into other languages.” (Guardian 23 May 2012)

Because the prize is open to fiction books by women from anywhere in the world, it means that Canadian writers have been shortlisted. This year Esi Edugyan has been shortlisted for Half Blood Blues, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2011. Earlier on, Anne Michaels was the winner in 1997 for Fugitive Pieces, with Margaret Atwood on the shortlist for Alias Grace. Margaret Atwood was again selected in 2001 but The Blind Assassin stayed on the shortlist, as did Oryx and Crake in 2004. Carol Shields won in 1998 with Larry’s Party and was shortlisted in 2003 for Unless.

Karen Connelly

Karen Connelly

In 2007, Karen Connelly won the Orange Award for New Writers, which ran from 2005 to 2010, for The Lizard Cage. The 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist included two Canadians: Heather O’Neill for Lullabies for Little Criminals and Nancy Huston for Fault Lines. In 2011, Kathleen Winter’s Annabel was shortlisted.

That’s 8 times out of 96 on the shortlists. That’s two Canadian winners for the Orange Prize for Fiction and one for the Award for New writers over 17 years. I know I should be looking not at the numbers but at the quality of the work of Canadian holders of the Orange Prize and how it has evolved. But I don’t have time today because I have a book review to write – something to do with a broken knuckle.

Below is a list of previous winners. For the full list with winners and shortlisted writers, go to the Orange Prize archives site.

Orange Prize for Fiction Winners

   2012:      The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

   2011:      The Tiger’s Wife,  Téa Obreht

    2010:     The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver

    2009:     Home, Marilynne Robinson

    2008:     The Road Home, Rose Tremain

    2007:      Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

    2006:     On Beauty, Zadie Smith

    2005:     We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver

    2004:     Small Island, Andrea Levy

    2003:     Property, Valerie Martin

    2002:     Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

    2001:     The Idea of Perfection, Kate Grenville

    2000:     When I Lived in Modern Times, Linda Grant

    1999:     A Crime in the Neighbourhood, Suzanne Berne

    1998:     Larry’s Party, Carol Shields

     1997:     Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels

     1996:     A Spell of Winter, Helen Dunmore

    

Heather O'Neill

Heather O’Neill

Related articles

2 on 1

Posted: May 19, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Two Canadian writers on the same page this morning in the Guardian Review. The first is a very positive review by John Burnside of D.W. Wilson’s Once You Break a Knuckle. And below that, Kate Pullinger’s review of a Frankenstein app.

Sara and Edward

Posted: May 16, 2012 in India, United Kingdom
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I linger’d; all within was noise

Of songs, and clapping hands, and boys

That crash’d the glass and beat the floor;

Where once we held debate, a band

Of youthful friends, on mind and art,

And labour, and the changing mart,

And all the framework of the land;

This is not from a review of the play we went to see last night ( Posh), but from a poem by Tennyson mourning a Cambridge friend (Canto 88, In Memoriam A. H. H., Representative Poetry Online). Tennyson and his friend Hallam joined the secret society or club called the Cambridge Apostles in 1829. The Canto quoted above describes what goes on behind A.H.H.’s former door at the university, and thus could be about the Apostles, according to this website. The Apostles were influential beyond university, including its Bloomsbury members and its spies. Read more about them here.

E. M. Forster

The author of the novel A Passage to India, E.M. Forster also was a member of the Apostles. Forster’s novel, The Longest Journey, supposedly opens with a recreation of an Apostles’ evening. If you were wondering how the photo of the British director of a film based on an English novel, A Passage to India, slipped onto the pages of a site about Canadian writers, Forster is why. And what does he have to do with Canadian Writers Abroad? One of my readers knows the answer, because she tipped me off to this connection. So I will give you a clue. Who else have I written about who wrote about India?

Here is an excerpt from the Selected Letters of E.M. Forster, Volume One. It is dated 12 November 1912, from Lahore, to his mother:

“Plans again altered as a most kind invitation has come from Mrs Cotes (‘Sarah Jeannette Duncan’) to stop with them at Simla; I am going up by the night train…” Then in a letter dated 21 November 1912, he writes:

“Mr Cotes himself was charming – the vigourous athletic type, but not the least alarming. He took me a delightful ride. Mrs Cotes was clever & odd – nice to talk to alone, but at times the Social Manner descended like a pall. Her niece completed the household; they were busy packing up for Delhi, and in great excitement over the change of capital, as are all. Their Simla house is quite English, with a hall, staircase of dark wood, etc.; indeed all the time I was in Simla, I forgot I was in India; there is nothing there but government & scenery.”

The Arena footnote explains that Everard Cotes (1862-1944) was Managing Director, Eastern News Agency, 1910-19, and on the London staff of The Christian Science Monitor. And that Sara Jeanette (Duncan) Cotes was a Canadian-born novelist and journalist.

As someone in the midst of house guests, I can’t stop myself from trying to figure out exactly how many days Forster (younger than Cotes by seven years) stayed with them. He left for Simla on the 12th by train, and wrote about the visit in the past tense on the 21st, having also been on a 20-hour train journey from Simla to Agra. The day before he left Simla, he went on a hike and stayed out overnight – “an eider down of Mrs Cotes’ kept me warm.” I calculate that he was with them for one week.

So, ok, she had servants to help her, I am sure. But Sara did not have the Apostles behind her.

the cast of Posh the play

cast for “Posh”, Tom Mison website

Screenplays and Scriptwriters

Posted: May 10, 2012 in Canada, London, Uncategorized
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How did I get here? I don’t even write film scripts. Well, I haven’t written my Wilson book review, and I haven’t done my Smart research, so I was searching Canadian writers outside of Canada. Getting a little desperate to find someone, anyone who knows how to use a pen, I pursued a link about Canadian and UK script writers working together: “The Canadian Film Centre’s Canada-UK Script Incubation Program is designed to create a new level of collaboration between Canada’s best writers and their UK based peers…” Sounds great, but the link is two years old. Or maybe that’s why there’s a CBC credit at the end of every Dr Who episode?

While on the CFC site, I found this script competition, the deadline for which is Wednesday, May 23, 2012. “The CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival, North America’s largest short film festival, is proud to announce that the annual Screenplay Giveaway is back!” One short film screenplay will win a prize package of film-making resources valued at over $50,000, which clearly means I’ve pursued the wrong kind of writing. Ah, but there’s a catch: To be eligible, screenplays must have a director and/or producer attached. Go to http://worldwideshortfilmfest.com/symposium/screenplay-giveaway/for entry details. See also the Canadian Film Centre’s Worldwide Short Film Festival. This year it takes place June 5-10, 2012, and will present over 275 films from over 30 countries.

Norman Jewison, CBC Still Photo Collection

While some fiction writers write screenplays (Mordecai Richler, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, for example), everyone knows that it is not the same kind of writing. Right? Soon after I arrived here, looking for a little writing information, I found this on the BBC Writersroom website:

“The other thing to remember about form, is that all scripts are blueprints rather than a piece of ‘literature’. They are written to be made – the first stage in a process of production. The more your scripts looks like something coherently formed and formatted, the more impressive and effective it will be. But it’s also potentially just the beginning of something bigger – so don’t be too precious about the words on the page.”

You can’t get any more different from a writer alone with a manuscript sweating over every word than that. But you can drag Norman Jewison into it (the connection is that he is the founder of the CFC above), talking not about scripts but about film as literature, as quoted on the CBC website: “Film is the literature of this generation,” says Toronto-born Norman Jewison. “Film is much less of a strain [than television], but of course it’s much more precise. It’s more of an art form.”

Although Norman Jewison is known for his support of Canadian film and for directing films and television, what is important here is that he moved to London in 1949, where he wrote some scripts for a children’s show for the BBC, among other things. Here is an excerpt from the Biographical Sketch prepared by Emmanuel College Library/University of Toronto:

“Continuing the string of successes was one of the films that have become closely identified with its director: “In The Heat Of the Night” (1967), a crime drama set in a racially divided Southern town and starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, while Jewison was nominated for Directing. … After the completion of the period comedy “Gaily, Gaily” (1969), Jewison, having become disenchanted with the political climate in the United States, moved the family to England. At Pinewood Studios northwest of London, and on location in Yugoslavia, he worked on what would become one of the top grossing films of all time, the musical “Fiddler On the Roof” (1971, re-issued 1979), which would win two Oscars and be nominated for five others, including Best Picture and Directing. … In 1999 Jewison’s work was recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when he was bestowed with the prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award for lifetime achievement. In recognition of his contributions to the arts, as well as his sustained support, he was installed as Chancellor of Victoria University in 2004. That same year his autobiography This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me was published.”

David Lean directing A Passage to India

David Lean wrote the screenplay and directed A Passage to India, based on the novel by E. M. Forster

Le Mas Blanc and Isabel Huggan

Posted: May 1, 2012 in France, Interviews
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I am happy to be able to offer you this interview with Isabel Huggan about the writing retreat she has recently opened at Le Mas Blanc. A Canadian writer of fiction, essays and poetry who now lives in France, she is the author of the collection (half memoir, half story) Belonging: Home Away from Home (2003), You Never Know (short stories, 1993), and the book of stories that launched her fiction career, The Elizabeth Stories (1984). She was awarded the Charles Taylor Literary Non-Fiction Prize in 2004 for Belonging.

She has been teaching writing for over 35 years, and on the staff of the Humber School for Writers since 1988, for which she earned the Calliope Award for Outstanding Writing & Teaching, from Humber College in 2003. She has given writing workshops not only in Canada but Australia, France, Switzerland, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. About Isabel and her retreat at Le Mas Blanc, Antanas Sileika wrote on the Humber blog: “She has always been one of the most gentle and caring teachers in the Humber program, so I can’t imagine anyone ever leaving the place without having learned something.”  Here are more details about her career.

I met Isabel at a meat counter in Nairobi, Kenya. Well, ok, we’d met briefly when I was taking a writing class with Leon Rooke and she was teaching another group, at St. Lawrence College in Kingston, and I found out she was in Kenya. So I had my ears perked for an Ontario accent. To this day I am glad I plucked up my courage to talk to her when she joined me at the meat counter. From then on, we went for walks in Lone Tree Estate. I remember a party she gave herself, of the women friends she had collected during her three years in Kenya – laughter, warmth, and great food. The following are her written answers to my written questions.

Isabel in the Cevennes with the hills behind her

Isabel Huggan in the Cevennes

Why did you decide to set up this retreat?

Around a decade ago, my husband Bob created an office on the top floor of a small stone barn that sits across the driveway from our house, for in his retirement he continued to work as an international development advisor and teacher. My own work space in the house is a comfortable book-lined study. When my husband died in 2011, I had the option of moving my office to the barn, but I couldn’t imagine myself working in that space, somehow… But I thought about how other people might use it. During our years in Belleville and Ottawa, both Bob and I had often gone off separately for a few days of intense and concentrated work, usually in a summer cottage: thus it struck me I might provide such a place for others looking for solitude and separation from their ordinary lives. Of course, I first thought of writers, but have since opened the concept to include translators, editors, artists, composers, and musicians – anyone with the need for privacy, and nothing to do but zero in on whatever project demands attention.

For how many years have you been living there?

Bob and I left Canada in 1987, spending three years in Nairobi, and then three years in Montpellier, and then Manila, where we stayed from 1993-98. During that period, on a return visit to France, we bought this old house, Mas Blanc, and during several summers worked to renovate it so that it was habitable by the time we moved in the spring of 1998. (I write about this in my memoir.) So in answer to your question, I’ve been here for 14 years, longer than I have ever lived in any other house. This is home.

What have you written in Le Mas Blanc?

I finished the last chapters of the memoir Belonging: Home Away From Home while living here, and I have also written several poems and essays, published in literary journals (such as The New Quarterly and The Malahat Review) and magazines (such as Home & Garden and Canadian Geographic).

What are you working on now?

I’m putting together a collection of related poetry and personal essays, as I like very much the way that these two genres have made friends with each other in the past few years, and show themselves to be entirely compatible within one book-cover. I thought the same for the blending of memoir with short stories when I took the chance with Belonging, so I hope this works as well.

What do you like about this place?

I’ve been here a long time, and so it feels wonderfully familiar, even though the topography and geographical features are not at all like the pastoral landscape of my childhood in south-western Ontario. This paysage reminds me in many ways of Australia in its rocky dryness, and as I am very much attached to Tasmania, but can’t possibly find a way to live there, this similarity gives me great comfort.

barn retreat

The barn that houses the upstairs room.

How long has it taken to get the barn renovated and the retreat set up? Who helped you?

As I said earlier, there already existed an office-space/guest room in the barn, which was large and bright, and had a bathroom with a shower ensuite (on the same level). So it was only a matter of redecorating, but nothing “major” in terms of renovation. I have been here long enough now that I know people who can help with such a project, and so it went along smoothly, although the hardest part for me was making decisions about items such as microwave ovens (I’ve never liked them and don’t have one, but it is an essential item in this bedsitting-studio space).

Who is it for? Are there any requirements, such as publication or manuscript in progress, or is it simply: If you can pay, you can come? Does it include reading or your comments on work? The only requirement is that you are an artist, of whatever variety, published or not, recognized or not, just starting out or in mid-stream, but above all you will be someone with a creative spirit who needs a place to “be alone to concentrate for a while.” If you are a writer, I am here to help with editorial comment, but as I must make my living in this way, I will charge for time spent reading and discussing your work. (For example, close reading of a text with line-editing corrections, €50 per hour; reading with a general overview commentary, €35 per hour, light reading prior to conversation, €30 per hour. Time spent depends on your needs and the size of your project.) [To see how exigent she might be, check her Humber blog.] If you are in a discipline that does not connect with mine, then your time here will be entirely yours to spend, without need of my counsel or mentoring services. If you pay – and if you are coming to work – then you can come. I do not want to open my private world of Mas Blanc to holiday-makers, only to those who are in some way engaged in productive, creative activity. Having been already published or recognised in your field is not a requisite.

Will there be more than one writer there at a time? No.

Is it easy to find? It is not at all difficult to find, and directions will be given if a booking is made. Mas Blanc is part of Tornac, which is actually not a village but a “commune” – that is, a collection of farms and houses over a large area of several kilometres. Tornac is close to Anduze, and only 45 minutes from Nimes and an hour from Montpellier.

What else is there to do? Can one clear one’s head by long walks or is one restricted to the barn?

There are lovely walks from the house, depending on the kind one wants. The “hill walk” takes about an hour and has some steepish bits, but it provides a lovely path through a pine forest at the top of the ridge. The “flat walk” takes less than an hour and goes through vineyards down to a crossing over the little river and then back home along a country road. The “village walk” goes up through the old stone houses in a part of Tornac known as “Soulier” and is a pleasant half-hour or so. And the “chateau walk” takes you through Soulier over to the hill on which sits the long-ruined chateau de Tornac, which presents you with a fabulous view down across the vineyards on one side and over toward Anduze and the Cevennes mountains on the other. On the other side of Anduze there is a very well-known park called “La Bambouserie,” in which you can spend many happy hours wandering the pathways through bamboo of every description, including an exquisite Japanese garden with ponds and lovely places to sit and dream. And if you have a vehicle, then driving up into the Cevennes is a “must” as the marked walks there are beautiful – I have a photo of a typical view on the website.

How much does it cost? How did you arrive at this price? Does it include meals?

room at Le Mas Blanc

The room at the retreat

I am charging €50 euros per day for the space itself, which is the usual low-end sum that one pays here for an overnight or weekend stay in a “gite.” Seven nights is €350 for the space, which will help me cover costs for electricity, water, etc. I provide all the food you will need for your two daily meals – breakfast and a simple lunch – and the cost for this is €50, so the final sum is €400. Everything is, of course, negotiable, if the length of time is less, or more, and if the food required is less, or more. For people coming without a car, I’ll meet their plane or train, and will provide an evening meal (this adds €100 for the week, a reasonable expenditure for three-course meals with wine). If people drive here, they may well prefer to dine at one of the many cafes or restaurants in Anduze or other nearby towns and villages. [If you are wondering about her cooking, here is her interview with The Hungry Novelist.]

Do you use retreats? Why would you recommend this one?

As I said earlier, I’ve always found it beneficial at some stage in my own writing to “go off somewhere” and leave the world behind. I’d recommend Le Mas Blanc because from the moment you turn around the walls of the monastery on your way here, you have had to slow down, and by the time you cross the tiny bridge to the road that brings you past the olives trees on the way to the house, you are in first gear. You have entered a new way of being. There is nothing to disturb you here, except the music of birdsong in the morning and the racket of frogs in the evening. It’s a heavenly place, which is why I am staying here myself.

What is nearby? If a writer were planning a vacation that ends with a retreat, for example.

I do address this to some extent on the website, so just to say here that I would happily provide some advice if asked. The Mediterranean is an hour away, and the mountains are an hour away in the other direction. Cities such as Nimes and Montpellier are close, as well as the cities of Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, and Carcassonne. And there are many charming towns, such as Uzes. It’s just a matter of interests and inclinations and time.

Go to the Le Mas Blanc website by clicking here. Find her blog by clicking here.

Isabel Huggan at a vintner's

Isabel is always happy to take her visitors off to go wine-tasting. Here she is at her favourite vineyard, Le Grand Chemin.