Jacques Reda chooses the height of the plum-picking season to revisit - on an old motorbike - his home town in Lorraine, north-eastern France. The fragrant allure of mirabelles introduces a colourful mix of old acquaintances renewed in these five days and vividly remembered places that have shaped a lifetime's writing. With its reflections, often whimsical, on the passing of the years, and its varied motifs - the plums, the provincial stillness, the toy soldiers of his childhood, 'the astonishing existence of others' first discovered as a love-struck schoolboy - this has few rivals as a portrayal of town life in la France profonde, written with tenderness and humour.
- ISBN13 9780856464492
- Publish Date 26 October 2012
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Carcanet Press Ltd
- Imprint Anvil Press Poetry
- Format Paperback
- Pages 96
- Language English