Book Review: Tales from the Pays d’Oc by Patricia Feinberg Stoner

Tales from the Pays d’Oc

by Patricia Feinberg Stoner

Amazon US / UK

Twenty-one tales of life, love, and laughter in the land of sun and vines.

What is Matthieu doing up an olive tree? Why won’t Joséphine ever eat pizza again? Who went four by fourth? And who rescued two hapless Americans at Armageddon Falls?

Travel to the Languedoc, feel the scorch of the sun on your shoulders, smell the dust and the lavender and the ripening grapes and follow the adventures of the Saturday Club and the regulars at l’Estaminet.

In this collection of stories, Patricia Feinberg Stoner revisits the territory of her memoir, ‘At Home in the Pays d’Oc’ with a whole host of new and familiar characters.

My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

Any big, butch vehicle with large knobbly tyres and an excess of mud flaps would set his eyes a-spark, but what he really loved were Land Rovers. And by Land Rovers, of course, he meant Series and Defenders. Not for him the high-falutin’ Range Rover, nor the serviceable but still sleek Discovery – these he called Bland Rovers, and he treated them with disdain.

Morbignan la Crèbe, a small village in the Languedoc…

Principal industry, winter and summer: gossip.

Secondary industry: wine.

Today Jeannette and her husband were coming to stay, and bringing the new baby. On the whole, Gaston approved of the fact that the baby was grey and white and fluffy rather than pink and squalling. As a grandfather of seven he was blasé about small humans, but dogs he loved.

Perhaps this was a teeny exaggeration, but Matthieu was never one to let a few facts spoil a good story.

The ladies of the village clung to their old ways: tightly-permed heads in steel grey or the eye-watering auburn universally referred to as menopause red.

My Review:

Being a complete Philistine, I had no idea what or where the Pays d'Oc was, so I went to the source of all things – Mr. Google – who informed me it is a very productive wine region along the Mediterranean coast.  I like wine, and I like Mediterraneans, so it seemed like a good fit.  This was a collection of amusing and inter-related short stories featuring a large cast of international characters and their precocious pets.  Each well-written story was laced with clever humor and delightful observations.  My favorites were The Boar Wars and those involving the precious little dogs named Visitor and Useless.  

Empress DJ

About Patricia Feinberg Stoner

Patricia Feinberg Stoner is a former journalist, advertising copywriter, and publicist. For four years she and her husband were accidental expatriates in the Languedoc, southern France. During that time she wrote a series of magazine articles which eventually became her first book about the Languedoc: ‘At Home in the Pays d’Oc.’

Now back in the UK, she lives with her husband in the pretty West Sussex village of Rustington, where Michael Flanders encountered a gnu and the mobility scooter is king.

She spends much of her time writing short stories and comic verses. Her first book, ‘Paw Prints in the Butter’, is a collection of comic poems for cat lovers, and is sold in aid of a local animal charity. In 2017 she published her second book of comic verse: ‘The Little Book of Rude Limericks’.

In the autumn of 2018 Patricia returns to the locale of ‘At Home in the Pays d’Oc’ with a new collection of stories: ‘Tales from the Pays d’Oc’.

Patricia welcomes visitors to her Facebook page (Paw Prints in the Butter) and to her blog www.paw-prints-in-the-butter.com.


You may occasionally find her on Twitter @perdisma.