Ruth Phillips

Cherries from Chauvet's Orchard, a Memoir of Provence Ruth Phillips 1st edition

When an English painter moves to Provence in search of the muse, he is looking not only for artistic fulfillment but also for love, family and community. This funny and touching memoir chronicles his unconventional route towards almost everything he desires, whilst painting a vivid picture of how hard it can be for one man to face a blank canvas - even in paradise.



'Cherries from Chauvet's Orchard' is full of the author's passion for things Provencal, and will be read by lovers of Provence (and Provencal food) with the greatest pleasure, but it is also an extremely honest account of what it takes for an artist to find his or her way in the world. There is a gritty kitchen sink element to Cherries which is absent in the work of, say, Peter Mayle, and which lifts this book above the usual croissants-and-cafe crème panegyric. This is a book about real people struggling to turn a ruin into a home and a relationship into a marriage. The ruin just happens to be set in some of the most beautiful countryside in the south of France. '

-Joseph Geary, author of Mirror and Spiral