A Good Year

Peter Mayle's book, A Year in Provence, was a newstand hit at the same time I spent my own very formative year there, and so I resisted reading it and, for a long time, resisted watching Scott's screen version of it. (I was there first, and I wasn't having anyone else telling me how gorgeous it was.) Well, the time is no doubt right, for it touched plenty of chords of my own, in addition to those of its hero, Max: Zola's paradise on Earth, the ineffable qualities of good wine, and the promise of romantic entanglement with an impossibly beautiful local lass. In short, an absolute delight marred only by the star's unnegotiable delivery.