A Place in Normandy
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In 1920, Nicholas Kilmer's grandfather Frederick Frieseke, one of the preeminent American impressionists, purchased a farmhouse in Mesnil, a Norman town almost completely (to quote a local taxi driver) sunken away dans la nature. Until his death in 1939 he lived and painted there in the company of his wife and daughter.
Long after the war that devastated Normandy, when Kilmer's grandmother's body was carried back from America to be buried alongside her husband in Mesnil, the family realized that they still owned the remnants of a large old Norman house standing amid many acres of orchard, woodland, and pasture. A Place in Normandy is a chronicle of renewed love and restoration, "subtly catching the rhythms of life and the flavor of an American family at ease in another culture" (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
What distinguishes this account of the trials and joys of fixing up an old French farmhouse from many others like it is that Kilmer didn't buy the place but inherited it; also three generations of his family spent memorable years in it and in its Norman village of Mesnil, near Pont l'Eveque. Long established, warm relations with the villagers protect Kilmer from regarding them as quaint or exotic. Even more unusual, although he and his wife, Julia, appreciate the excellence of French produce, Kilmer doesn't dwell on the familiar marvels of French cuisine. Instead, while shoring up the neglected place--roof, plumbing, bearing walls, electric wiring--is the impetus for his book, it also becomes an excursion into family history and a meditation on French village life since the 1920s, when his grandfather, American Impressionist painter Frederick Frieseke, bought the house. He traces each generation's structural additions and alterations, the gardens they planted, their parties, weddings, funerals, communions, crises and pleasures, and the distinctive beauties of the countryside. This quiet book subtly catches the rhythms of life and the flavor of an American family at ease in another culture. Photos.
