Instructions for Visitors
Life and Love in a French Town
Helen Stevenson(Author)
Black Swan (Publisher)
Published on 1. January 2002
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-0-552-99928-1 (ISBN)
Description
The beguiling, funny and frank story of a young Englishwoma; If you are lucky enough to find your place, you should never actually live in it, never make it your home. And never live with the man you think you cannot live without. Le Village is a small town at the southwestern-most tip of France. Here a young Englishwoman fell in love with France, the French and one Frenchman in particular. In her seductive, lyrical and witty memoir Helen Stevenson writes about life in Le Village, not as an expat, but as someone adopted by her neighbours as one of their own. By Stefan, the Maoist tennis fanatic, who lives off his lover in solidarity with the unemployed; by Gigi, the chic Parisian who dresses her ex-lovers' girlfriends from the stock of her exquisite boutique; and by Luc, the crumpled cowboy painter and part-time dentist, who, overcoming an aversion to blondes, takes the Englishwoman up to his remote mas, shows her his paintings and teaches her to ride.
Describing the colour and light of the landscape with lyrical intensity, and savouring the languid and sexy flavour of the Mediterranean lifestyle, Helen Stevenson lays bare a romantic but potentially disastrous love affair with the man 'who seems like the only man alive to me, the one with the halo round his head in a crowd, if I should ever see him in a crowd'. Instructions For Visitors may start as an objective guide for tenants arriving at her village house, but it ends as a very personal revelation of how difficult it can be to transplant oneself into someone else's country, someone else's culture, someone else's heart.
Describing the colour and light of the landscape with lyrical intensity, and savouring the languid and sexy flavour of the Mediterranean lifestyle, Helen Stevenson lays bare a romantic but potentially disastrous love affair with the man 'who seems like the only man alive to me, the one with the halo round his head in a crowd, if I should ever see him in a crowd'. Instructions For Visitors may start as an objective guide for tenants arriving at her village house, but it ends as a very personal revelation of how difficult it can be to transplant oneself into someone else's country, someone else's culture, someone else's heart.
More details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Transworld Publishers Ltd
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 133 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
212 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-552-99928-1 (9780552999281)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Helen Stevenson
Instructions For Visitors
E-Book
07/2009
1st Edition
Transworld Digital
€6.99
Available for download