Customer Reviews
not quite what it seems - By: Demot, 21 May 2008 
I must admit I was seduced by the wonderful cover photo of Mont-Saint-Michel, & the title which suggests a romantic travel book, where the local peculiarities are grounded in the authors knowledge of local history - something like a H.V.Morton's Traveller in Italy for today (and for France).
What you actuallly get is a social history of the provincial French peasantry from 1780 to 1880. I now find out that the American edition has a sub-title very like this, but not a sign of it on my copy, or on Amazon-UK. However, it is well written & so not as dull as that sounds, in fact it is good to read, & interesting in a rather vague way - paints pictures rather then pushing a thesis.
The only way it is 'heavy' is the 400 good-size pages, 100 of which are notes & index, etc. It seems rather to have falllen between two purposes; clearly designed to be academic, as shown by the exhaustive referencing; yet aimed at the general reader who might have been better served if the many years of extensive traveling were brought to the fore, to ground the knowledge in the country we find today. And a fiercer editor might help - not that it is long winded, but I feel the same picture of France could have been painted in half the words. Starting with 50 pages on how dismal life was in rural France 100 years ago does not make for the easiest start to the book.
But I am not sorry I persevered, it is a good book, now that I have got used to the sort of book it is.
wonderful, written with a passion for france and its people - By: M. Notman, 19 May 2008 
having bought & loved both "rimbaud" & "homosexual love in the 19th century" i actuallly didnt realise that this was by the same author until id finished it & got to the authors photograph. Its trully a masterpiece of arcana & lost facts, engagingly written & wonderfully descriptive thoughout- i was very sorry to finish it & have re-read several times (which given my current pile of unread books is hard!)
this isnt a travelogue- its more of a search for the soul of france, & that is a VERY hard thing to pull off successfully- fantastique Msr Robb!
Discover the real France - By: Ian David Curry, 01 Feb 2008 Graham Robb is a serious scholar. He has written books on Balzac, Rimbaud, Victor Hugo & Baudelaire. This list also suggests another academic & personal passion - France. He earned a PhD in French literature at Vanderbilt University after his degree in modern languages at Oxford, & has since excelled as a writer. This is a rare fusion of scholarly research & revelatory fact, written in an accessible but highly literate & engaging style.
The book is quite difficult to pigeonhole. It is at times a travel book, based on Robb's own personal experience of cycling around France & getting a feel for the immensity of what the pre-industrial nation would have been. It is also an anthropological study of the French, & the development of the nation through history. In fact the central thesis, that the idea of a French nation is a purely modern conceit, occupies much of the book. Robb then sets out to describe what the modern republic replaced. The migrations of peoples, the intricate network of towns, villages & regions, the Babel tongued array of languages & dialects, the cast of untouchables & the tenuous attachment to Paris & royal control.
It is a biography of the French people, an erudite, if potted, ramble through folklore, local history, linguistics & sociology. Perhaps most startling is that the book manages to amaze on every page with facts that even those conversant with French history would be intrigued with. This is a history of the ordinary people, of the rhythms & nature of everyday life. It is an account of a nation held together by the loosest of binds, where the Paris elite could barely travel & expect to be understood outside the Ile de France.
This is at the heart of the book. Robb considers that the bulk of history written on France starts from the central conceit that Paris, king & court were somehow representative or integral to the rest of France. He demonstrates this falsehood with startling stories, from the existence & experience of an outcast group, the Cagot to the original `tour de France', conducted on foot by the apprentice bands of craftsmen & covering the vast internal migrations of workers, the daily grind & difficulty of peasant life, & the experience of those `explorers' who ventured into this misunderstood hinterland, are revealed in a delicious & gripping text.
If I was to be glib I could say this was a Bill Bryson for the literary set, but this would diminish both Robb & Bryson's work. It is a unique & fascinating ramble through French history, with a strong central argument that modern France, & with it the modern French, are a singularly modern creation. This was built over the rich & intricate patchwork of local & regional identities, which, Robb manages to argue with an erudite conviction, were far more interesting & noteworthy entities.
Robb won the 1997 Whitbread Book Award for best biography with Victor Hugo & was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Rimbaud in 2001. I expect this book to win even greater praise. This was easily my non-fiction book recommendation of the year for 2007, & is a book I will return to. It was revelatory, lucid & vivid. Anyone with an interest in France, or in history, will be well served by getting this book as soon as possible.
Eugen Weber - Peasants into Frenchmen - By: M. Ian Walthew, 30 Nov 2007 Anyone who likes this book reallly ought to check out a remarkable book written by the recently deceased American historian, Eugen Weber, "Peasants into Frenchman" - first published by Stanford University Press in 1976 but still in print. (Published also in French in as "La Fin des Terroirs: La modernisation de la France rurale 1870-1914".) It transformed my understanding of modern day France.
France Profonde - By: J. Daniels, 18 Nov 2007 This book alllows you to discover a completely unexpected glimpse of a forgotten & hidden France. Some of the photographs will stop you dead in your tracks. Instead of the uniform, smooth running & modern France we see today Robb takes you into a world of a France that was scarcely known even to its own government. Using the detail from his research he describes the harshness & poverty of the French existence in rural areas & gives a sense of the isolation & boredom of life as well as the great migrations to find work such as the masons of the Limousin. Forgotten trades are explained, forgotten languages resurrected. This book is a must read to help you understand why France is like it is today.
