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| At Home in France | 
 enlarge | Author: Ann Barry
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $19.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (23 reviews)
Sales Rank: 578100
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0345407873
Dewey Decimal Number: 910
EAN: 9780345407870
ASIN: 0345407873
Publication Date: March 11, 1997
Release Date: March 11, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
"As beguiling and delectable as France itself."
*Mimi Sheraton
"Ann Barry tells her tale directly and clearly, without cloying artifice or guile, so that it has the warmth, honesty, and force of a long letter from an old friend. She makes her reader a welcome house guest in her much-loved little cottage in the heart of France."
*Susan Allen Toth
Ann Barry was a single woman, working and living in New York, when she fell in love with a charming house in Carennac in southwestern France. Even though she knew it was the stuff of fantasy, even though she knew she would rarely be able to spend more than four weeks a year there, she was hooked. This spirited, captivating memoir traces Ms. Barry's adventures as she follows her dream of living in the French countryside: Her fascinating (and often humorous) excursions to Brittany and Provence, charmed nights spent at majestic chateaux and back-road inns, and quiet moments in cool Gothic churches become our own.
And as the years go by, and "l' Americaine," as she is known, returns again and again to her real home, she becomes a recognizable fixture in the neighborhood. Ann Barry is a foreigner enchanted with an unpredictable world that seems constantly fresh and exciting. In this vivid memoir, she shares the colorful world that is her France.
"AN INTELLIGENT MEMOIR."
*The New Yorker
"DELIGHTFUL . . . BARRY WRITES ENGAGINGLY. . . . [She] is very much at home in such fine company as M.F.K. Fisher's Two Towns in Provence, Robert Daley's Portraits of France, and Richard Goodman's French Dirt.
*St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 This author is so 'gauche!' July 24, 2007
2 out of 9 found this review helpful
I find France captiviating but I find the people who say they like France to be excruciating; chicks who gush about Impressionism and the D'Orsay who know zero about anything else, wine snobs, culture snobs, food snobs. These are all ways to encounter France in an embalmed way; an approach devised to apply the conspicuous class of all things French to oneself; the narrowest & silliest means of engaging travel. The negative example of this type of Francophile prevents others who might bond with France and the French from doing so. I prefer France in a living way. And I don't talk about it to pester people with my 'class.'
Ann seems to prefer France because her errands are cuter there. She isn't a snob (not exactly), and the prospect of living in France is very exciting but... the book is undermined by some excruciating tics:
1) She acknowledges her own limited French and recounts stories about language-related confusion while dropping self-consciously italicized French phrases into sentences (without translations, of course). I know plenty of French and at least 50 percent of her phrases remain unclear. (A chef is referred to as a 'septieme.' etc.)
2) She names each person who wanders into her narrative by their full (first and last) name; like she's some sort of compulsive name-completist. It's very weird. These are people the reader will never encounter and has no chance of meeting (relatives, visitors, handymen). Finally on page 85 I was just embarassed for her, as she took that irritant to the depths of bad taste.
She fully names the kind proprietress of a chateau, and proceeds to trash the meal she was served there, with a short bit of character assasination. Nice Ann! Real class. My patience was wearing thin over the name-dropping, even before she hit this low. Noone cares about your bad meal, Ann. She probably wouldn't even recall it if she weren't stretched for material.
The book wanders wherever she pleases and resists any unifying theme. It felt like I was reading an account of every errand she ran in France, and the 'zany' results of every outing she researched badly. It ain't deep. I repeat, just read Gopnik's Paris to the Moon for a similar situation done well.
 Fleeting and gorgeous! June 13, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Mr. Ruiz wrote a wonderful review that echos my sentiments exactly.
When I read that Ms Barry had died the text took on a new meaning for me. All I was doing was planning a trip to France. Ann's naration added a profoundly human feeling to it all. I laughed out loud over the water incident because it has happened to me. The last chapter is precious as I have worked in film and have seen first hand what a film crew can do to a town. The residents handled it like champions. I was also on a run when an absolutely crazy dog ran up from behind and bit me(on the buttocks). Oh, to have been bitten in the calf instead! Ann- I wish you could have written more...
As I continue to plan my trip to France and do what I can to avoid the Peter Mayle shrines, it saddens me that I won't be able to think, "Oh, that lovely Ann Barry is here." Well, perhaps she will be in spirit.
The Sleeping Stranger
Unprecedented Connection with Author December 12, 2005
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
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.
Ann Barry obituary - from the New York Times December 13, 2004
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
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 June 5, 2004
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
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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