Second Harvest - Jean Giono

I went on holiday to recently. I wanted to take a book by a Provencal writer – came up with this one.

Here is Amazon’s synopsis:

In the only three inhabitants remain - the blacksmith, a widow and Panturle, the hunter. Soon Panturle is abandoned and begins to lose his mind. But then a woman arrives and life is restored to the village as Panturle plants wheat to produce a second harvest.

Yep. That’s pretty much the size of it.

There’s nothing at all surprising here – if the description sounds like the kind of thing you’d enjoy, then you’ll enjoy it. Thankfully Giono has kept it short, so it’s all over pretty quickly: if you’re not enjoying it too much it won’t take long; but then, you’re not missing much if you skip it.

So if the destination is obvious, how about the journey? It is written in the pared-down style of a parable. This is a book about humans, and their relationship to the soil, and could have been set in , take your pick. There is nothing particularly Provencal about it; Giono was friends with Pagnol but, in this book at least, shares little of his enthusiasm for local colour. It’s by the numbers, but I wasn’t unmoved – I’ll check him out again.