About book The Provence Cure For The Brokenhearted. Bridget Asher (2011)
We need to keep practicing joy, is the lesson that Heidi learns when she travels to Provence to oversee the repairs to her family home. Still grieving the death of her husband two years before, Heidi, her OCD son Abbot, her neice Charlotte seem to fit in better there than into thelife she and her late husband Henry had made in the States.The house has stories, every person has stories, and stories told/shared can heal. By the end we aren't at a 'happily ever after' but more in tune with the present than the past, and it is wonderful as is this lovely book. Does this book make everyone think of their own heartaches? their own losses in life? While reading this book I allowed myself to wallow in sef-pity for the exquisite and sharp pain of being abandoned and left with two children to raise, alone. To remember the hurt that they felt, that they still feel of being abandoned too. I've had that argument in my own mind, the one with Heidi and Julien (I love that name...a memory from my 19-year old self buying a Julien Clerc record on the Champs Elysees!), arguing over who feels the most misery: someone who loses a spouse to abandonment or to death. In my scenario death is easier. It's final. There are no loose ends in death. There were real people in my argument that I could point to and say, "See, it's easier for them." Now I can see that everyone has heartache, in all its varied forms. It feels right that Julianna chose to let the hungry people in Africa win the argument. Thankfully, the pain is a distant memory, one where the argument doesn't matter anymore. Like the book, our lives can have happy endings too. Someone else with sparkling eyes can make us forget (not forget, but overlook) the sad past and love again. This book evokes many happy memories for me: visiting small inns like Veronique's in Italy and France. Paris. Thinking partly in French and partly in English. Searching for the right French word and not getting it quite right. The little chapel on the mountain. Renting cars. Driving rented cars on tiny dirt roads in the countryside, sucking in my stomach with my eyes shut as the cars whistle past. The smell of the earth. The mountains of France. The food. Delicious, different food. Pastry shops with divine litte confections.I love that this book has a happy ending. So many books that I've read in the last few years are tragic with tragic endings. Enough! We need Provence in the spring! With lilacs blooming and their fragrance filling the air. We need provencal chicken dinners with tartes aux citron!
Do You like book The Provence Cure For The Brokenhearted. Bridget Asher (2011)?
A sweet, little, summertime story with likable characters and a beautiful setting.
—alexwang22
Enjoyed this book....an easy read I loved the locations :)
—nick
Very enjoyable book that transported me to Provence.
—Diana
