The Feasting Season [Paperback]

Nancy Coons (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 13, 2007

Meg Parker, an American travel-book writer, lives in the Lorraine countryside with her two small children and a neglectful husband. Domestic life is beginning to take its toll until Meg is offered her dream assignment: to write a guidebook about French history. Unfortunately, there is a catch. Jean-Jacques, a scruffy and imperious photographer, has been assigned to the project. As the dueling pair visits each region in search of the past, what they find is the colorful, food-filled present—the festive bullfights in the Camargue, the sacred gypsy pilgrimage at Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the pictographs and lightning storms of Mount Bégo. And over the course of mouthwatering meals—of lamb daube, paella and rosé, bull steak and anchioade, Brebis and strawberries—their antagonistic collaboration turns into a fiery love affair.

Meg's notions about history—about what we preserve and how we accept the new—evolve, and in the end, she must reconcile her two lives and decide what to hold on to, and what to let go.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This debut novel, a travelogue/love story by the author of a number of European travel books, has much to offer in its description of food, wine and history, but little to say about amour. American-born travel writer Meg Parker lives with her husband and two children in a centuries-old farmhouse in the Lorraine region of France. With her fruit cellar as her home office, Meg is working on another guidebook and a French text when she receives an offer to write a book on French history. Her goofy British husband, Nigel, seems happiest drinking with his friends, her children are needy, and after little deliberation, Meg accepts the offer. Her relationship with the book's photographer, Jean-Jacques Chabrol (J-J to his amis), is stormy from their first e-mail exchange. The conflict between the two (he, a typically passionate Frenchman, she, the typical overeducated American living abroad) is as predictable as their explosive love affair. Their steamy, France-hopping days and nights are punctuated by Meg's visits home and her stabs at deciding whom she wants more: Nigel or J-J. Coons's lush novel is most seductive when dealing with French gastronomical history, but the love story never removes itself from the boilerplate. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

American-born Meg Parker lives in rural Lorraine with her husband and children. Writing French textbooks for American students absorbs her working hours, and she lands a contract to produce a travel guide to France. Collaborating with a haughty, high-living French photographer exasperates her because he acts more interested in bullfighting in Arles and Gypsy festivals in the wilds of the Camargue than in producing actual copy to submit to their publisher. But, bit by bit, as the two of them travel across the face of France, his devil-may-care persona seduces her from the quotidian responsibilities of domestic life. French food and wine play a central role in Coons' fiction, and her descriptions of classic vintages, great restaurant dinners, and glorious provincial foods will appeal to Francophiles. Anyone who imagines that travel writers lead exciting, romantic lives in near-ideal career situations will find such prejudices both contradicted and affirmed here. Knoblauch, Mark
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (July 13, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565125193
• ISBN-13: 978-1565125193
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 7.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #946,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sensually written but a disappointing end, August 30, 2007

By 

Bookphile (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Feasting Season (Paperback)

Nancy Coons has a real talent for writing so vivid you can practically smell the scents she describes and taste the flavors about which she writes. Even after only five minutes with the book I wanted to go out and have a good meal. It's very obvious that Coons is a food writer and that she knows her subject intimately. It's refreshing to read something in which food is presented as something to be enjoyed, a pleasure to be relished, and cooking is made art by her writing. The book is certainly worth a read for that alone.

On the downside, I never really could understand what drove Meg to marry Nigel in the first place. He's borderline mentally abusive, patronizing her and treating her like she's a child, refusing to take her work seriously, and disregarding her every protest against his monstrous plans to demolish part of their historic farmhouse in favor of creating a hideous glasshouse. That alone made me despise the character. In all seriousness, though, Meg's marriage is not a good one and her reasons for having entered into it are very unclear to me. I found myself frustrated with her every time her husband marginalized her and, far worse yet, their children. He's not only a poor husband, he's a poor father who stays out till all hours and takes advantage of his wife's research travels to party like a single guy while his kids are at home with their far too patient nanny.

The relationship between Meg and Jean-Jacques is sensually written but I found him rather frustrating as well. He expects Meg to tell him everything and yet he does his best to keep his past from her. I'm not sure I felt that he was really a better match for her than Nigel as he is also given to patronizing her and refusing to take her seriously. Even after their relationship deepens, he still seems to take delight in mocking Meg's eagerness to pursue the historical angle of the book they're writing. He ignores her input and pretty much does what he wants with it. Still, he is kinder to her than her husband and he does seem to have more of an appreciation for her.

Overall, the writing is lush and this book is a very good read. It would have been truly extraordinary if Meg would have come into her own more. I thought she spent too much time being everything for everyone else and not enough time just being herself. I wanted her to grow a backbone, to really go after the things she wanted, to make the men in her life take her seriously or disregard them altogether.

In spite of my disappointment with the characters, the descriptions of Meg's and Jean-Jacques's travels, of the places they visited and the foods they ate, was nothing short of spectacular. More than anything, this book is something of a love letter to France itself, to its history and culture and, especially, its food and wine. Considering the beating France has taken in the U.S. in recent times, it was lovely to read a positive novel about France, one in which the people are human and not so very different from the people in the U.S.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can't wait for the sequel..., September 24, 2007

By 

L. Woods (Austin, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Feasting Season (Paperback)

This book was great... I loved how she vividly described the food, and how it brought her and JJ together.

I do not agree with the reviewer that wanted her to grow a backbone. Yes, that would have been nice, but women are known to put themselves and their needs aside to do for their children/husbands, so I think this is accurate of real life. Who knows, maybe she will grow that backbone in the sequel? I can't wait to find out...

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply the best, February 22, 2008

By 

AnneFalley "Anne" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Feasting Season (Paperback)

I love this book. Nancy Coons' characters show us that life is messy, but amazingly, intoxicatingly luscious. As readers, we experience the tastes, the smells, and yes, the history of France through vivid descriptions and experiences.

I love the characters with their many flaws ... the symbolism of the bunker, the conservatory and the runaway dog ... and the two lovers that make me want to book the first flight to France. Coons can't write fast enough for me ... I want the next installment now.