First published 1990. Alison and Busby paperback, 1992, pp 192, c.62,000 words.
A British family buys a rundown property in rural France as a holiday home. It has been done before: Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence springs to mind which was published just a year before this. Indeed this does have quite a lot in common with that book: the bucolic landscape, the fine food, trouble with builders, etc. It too is well written and enticing.
Silvestre was a musical actress and her husband an academic. They seem to have been able to schedule long holidays at Easter and during the summer. She craved warmth and sun, and modest property in rural France was relatively cheap in the late 1970s. Eventually they settled on a small, rundown farmhouse in Aquitaine, in the south-west. They seem to have been lucky in finding a place where the neighbours were congenial and accepting, indeed welcoming of the English second-home owners. It doesn’t seem to have been long before Silvestre and her family were being invited to meals. This may well have been due to the family’s apparent extrovert nature and their willingness to take part in the rural life, helping out with harvests, and in employing locals for the restoration of their old house that had previously been unoccupied for seven years.
Interestingly, the seller, a farmer, had acquired the house and adjoining land through a traditional local custom. It had been owned by a widow and her disabled son, and they had run it as a small holding, largely growing their own food. As those two became old, and as they had no close relatives to look after them, they entered into an agreement with the local farmer. He would look after them, providing them with a detailed specification of food and wood for burning. When the two had died, the farmer acquired the property. What might be called ‘equity release’ these days. He kept the farm land.
The book opens with a classic description of a grape harvest in which the Silvestres took part for the first time after they had semi-retired and were able to stay later in the year. It is a charming scene, un-patronisingly written. The grapes are hand-cut by a large group of villagers, working as a team, following a time worn system. We get introduced to some of the characters of the village and local gossip. The grapes are taken to the local cooperative for processing using modern machinery.
During the twelve years that are covered in this book, there is substantial change. The neighbouring farmer is keen on new machinery, aware that the young people have no need to accept the hard labour of traditional farm life. Sensibly, the farmer changes his crops according to the market. The sunflowers of the title don’t actually appear until the very end. The farmer is also astute: when the Silvestres have to have a load of soil dug away from the up-slope side of their house, where it has accumulated and is now causing damp trouble, the farmer has the soil deposited at the top of his large sloping field, which no doubt had lost soil over the years. It is an arrangement that suits all parties.
Rural life comes across as a fine mix of holding on to what is best of the old ’systems’, ways of doing things, whether farming or food preparation, and delight in the new labour-saving devices. There is nostalgia for the ‘autrefois’, olden-days, but acceptance of change. Twelve years is long enough for witnessing such change, as well as the change in people. The young grow up and become adult, the old grow frail.
Silvestre writes very well, making for easy reading. There are a few phrases in French, but anything other than the most basic is translated. There some wonderful, mouth-watering descriptions of seven-course meals that seem to have been quite common. At the end of the book there are a few tips for those who might be thinking of following in their footsteps, although these are likely to be quite dated by now.
Guardian obituary of Silvestre: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/jan/26/ruth-silvestre-obituary
Others’ reviews of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19164434-a-house-in-the-sunflowers?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=rUT0fIOTTH&rank=1 © William John Graham, May 2024