At Home in France

• Paperback - 11 March, 1997 - Ballantine Books
• Usually ships in 24 hours
• By: Ann Barry
• ISBN: 0345407873

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Reviews by readers

Ann Barry obituary - from the New York Times

Ann Barry, Editor And Writer, 53
(NYT) 245 words
Published: February 19, 1996

Ann Barry, who pursued a freelance writing career while working as an editor at The New York Times and at The New Yorker, died of cancer on Saturday at the Mount Sinai Medical Center. She was 53 and lived in Brooklyn.
Miss Barry, who was born in St. Louis and graduated from St. Louis University, started as an editorial assistant at the The New Yorker in 1967 before moving down the street to The Times in 1975.

While designing and editing the Sunday Arts and Leisure Guide, editing art and dance reviews and designing the daily cultural pages, she began contributing articles to The Times, a career she continued and expanded after she returned to The New Yorker in 1990 as managing editor of the Goings On About Town section.

Although she wrote on a variety of subjects, Miss Barry, who left The New Yorker in 1994, particularly enjoyed writing about the Dordogne region of southwestern France, where, not coincidentally, she owned a vacation home.

Although she could spend only two or three weeks there a year, Miss Barry kept such meticulous track of her intense short-term experiences that she turned them into a book, "At Home in France: Tales of an American and Her House Abroad." It is being published by Ballantine next month.

She is survived by a brother, Gene, of Palm Harbor, Fla.

Unprecedented Emotional Connection with an Author

My cousin (also a globe-trotting single female) recommended this book to me when I undertook a solo 13-day driving trip around France. I viewed it as a bit of fluff to downshift with every night before sleeping. I intended to zip through it and hand it off to another traveler, perhaps on the return flight. I had not foreseen the grip it would have on me.

I revere Peter Mayle and think he is one of our most brilliant wordsmiths. At first, by contrast, At Home seemed pedestrian, but charming enough. I realized the difference between them is that Mayle was a ad-man (flash-boom-bang!) who could make the mundane hilarious and Barry was an editor (who-what-when-where-why-how?) who was a stealth raconteuse who wrapped me in her delicate web. I found myself up reading 'til 1 and 2 every morning, and genuinely felt grief when I read that she had died. Indeed, the book seemed to have ended unfinished. Like another reviewer or two, I yearn to know more about the circumstances of her death, and the disposition of her beloved cottage.

What was unprecedented for me was that as soon as I finished it, I began to re-read it, and am I ever glad I did! I'm getting nuances out of it I'd glanced over previously. Ann was a dear companion on my own travels, and my trip was the richer for it. I don't intend to part with this book. I will lend it to friends and reread it again when I, too, get to realize my dream of owning a gite in France. (Unlike Ann, I'm not financially able to just keep it in mothballs between visits - mine will be rented out.)

A darling book, though I only gave it 4 stars because it's not a Great Book, but eminently readable - even on the second pass.

Unprecedented Connection with Author

My cousin (also a globe-trotting single female) recommended this book to me when I undertook a solo 13-day driving trip around France. I viewed it as a bit of fluff to downshift with every night before sleeping. I intended to zip through it and hand it off to another traveler, perhaps on the return flight. I had not foreseen the grip it would have on me.

I revere Peter Mayle and think he is one of our most brilliant wordsmiths. At first, by contrast, At Home seemed pedestrian, but charming enough. I realized the difference between them is that Mayle was a ad-man (flash-boom-bang!) who could make the mundane hilarious and Barry was an editor (who-what-when-where-why-how?) who was a stealth raconteuse who wrapped me in her delicate web. I found myself up reading 'til 1 and 2 every morning, and genuinely felt grief when I read that she had died. Indeed, the book seemed to have ended unfinished. Like another reviewer or two, I yearn to know more about the circumstances of her death, and the disposition of her beloved cottage.

What was unprecedented for me was that as soon as I finished it, I began to re-read it, and am I ever glad I did! I'm getting nuances out of it I'd glanced over previously. Ann was a dear companion on my own travels, and my trip was the richer for it. I don't intend to part with this book. I will lend it to friends and reread it again when I, too, get to realize my dream of owning a gite in France. (Unlike Ann, I'm not financially able to just keep it in mothballs between visits - mine will be rented out.)

A darling book, though I only gave it 4 stars because it's not a Great Book, but eminently readable - even on the second pass.

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