The Little French Village of Book Lovers by Nina George

Author:Nina George [George, Nina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405945189
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2023-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

18

Bonjour, the Bookabus Is Here

The mobile library soon came to be known as the “book bus,” and because children couldn’t separate the two words, they called it the “bookabus” and the name stuck.

Valérie Montesquieu and Francis Meurienne drove their books anywhere there was a road or a track, and when the tracks ended, Marie-Jeanne mounted Fino the donkey to bring “knowledge, education, and beauty, not to mention some of the most romantic stories on earth, to the all-too-austere wastelands,” as Valérie put it.

Françoise Sagan, Anne Golon’s series of Angélique novels, Jules Verne, and good old Simenon were popular, as were what Mussigmann the bookseller called “romans à l’eau de rose”—romances in which pirates, revolutionaries, and dukes fell madly in love with unhappily married damsels and absconded with them.

Simone de Beauvoir and The Catcher in the Rye enjoyed less enthusiastic uptake, and Francis and Valérie could only loan them after swearing absolute secrecy—cast-iron literary privacy. Sartre and Camus, Foucault and Simone Weil, were tricky propositions too. While the younger generation couldn’t get enough of them, their elders were bamboozled as they read these books on their outdoor toilets; they had the feeling that these people were writing about them but not really for them. Only Madame Châtelet devoured the writings of the existentialists and women philosophers.

Loulou now reserved the finest baguettes for this elegant lady’s secret dinners with her invisible guest. However, it was months before Madame Châtelet could look Loulou in the eye and say, “Merci, ma belle,” with a grateful nod.

Much to Elsa’s satisfaction, the mobile library’s biggest hit was her handwritten recipes. She dictated them to Marie-Jeanne, and there was huge demand for Madame Elsa’s Traditional Drôme Provençale Cookery Book. Francis considered having it printed at the works below the castle in Grignan, but he calculated that even his rising earnings were insufficient to cover the costs.

So Marie-Jeanne transcribed ten copies in her best handwriting under the calligraphic guidance of Madame Colette. They bound them and Elsa made a lace cover for each, but ten was far too few—there was a months-long waiting list for them. Everyone wanted to know how to make her olive and truffle omelet, her scented scrambled eggs, her ratatouille seasoned with garlic and onions alone, no herbs. The book contained a magic formula for thyme brandy and recipes for homemade nougat, the region’s famous pô bouilli rye bread, gratin dauphinois, ravioles, and garlic mayonnaise containing alicoque, new freshly pressed olive oil from Nyons.

Teachers, farmers, members of the Confrérie des Chevaliers de l’Olivier (an olive growers’ guild whose honorary president was the author Jean Giono), the Society for the Preservation of Pétanque, young women who managed holiday camps in the Vaucluse region, Raspail the baker’s five daughters, and everyone else was allowed to place an order to buy or borrow a particular book. Tactfully put, this resulted in an amazingly varied selection of tastefully printed French works, ranging from love stories to the most detailed guides to building a house or maintaining a chicken coop.

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