My Good Life in France

One grey dismal day, Janine Marsh was on a trip to northern France to pick up some cheap wine. She returned to England a few hours later having put in an offer on a rundown old barn in the rural Seven Valleys area of Pas de Calais. This was not something she’d expected or planned for. Janine eventually gave up her job in London to move with her husband to live the good life in France. Or so she hoped. While getting to grips with the locals and la vie Française, and renovating her dilapidated new house, a building lacking the comforts of mains drainage, heating, or proper rooms, and with little money and less of a clue, she started to realize there was lot more to her new home than she could ever have imagined. These are the true tales of Janine’s rollercoaster ride through a different culture—one that, to a Brit from the city, was in turns surprising, charming, and not the least bit baffling.

• One Sip at a Time: Learning to Live in Provence
• A Paris Year: My Day-to-Day Adventures in the Most Romantic City in the World
• Uncorked: My year in Provence studying Pétanque, discovering Chagall, drinking Pastis, and mangling French
• Paris Letters
• L'Appart: The Delights and Disasters of Making My Paris Home
• My Twenty-Five Years in Provence: Reflections on Then and Now
• Eight Months in Provence: A Junior Year Abroad 30 Years Late
• My (Part-Time) Paris Life: How Running Away Brought Me Home
• The Paris Effect
• The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club