Instructions For Visitors

A beautifully tactile and relective meditation on the outsider's experience of a community, it is sharp and lyrical, occasionally a little whimsical, but always pushing towards the truth.

The Times

'Lyrically evocative...a book worth reading'

The Scotsman

The most authentic, enjoyable and evocative book on French village life that I have read in years.

Joane Harris, author of Chocolat

'Seductive, vibrant and utterly candid'

Books

A warm and wistful account of adapting to a new country and the heartache it brings.

Elle

'Helen Stevenson has written a brilliant memoir about how it feels to fall in love not only with a place, but also with the man who embodies it'

Eve Magazine

Wonderfully evocative, with a plangent note of longing, this is one for those dreary February commutes to work.

Marie Claire

'Her village attains a life beyong the stereotypies, a vividness that goes deeper than Gallic hauteur and great bread'

Scotland on Sunday

'If you've every wanted to pack it all in and head for the middle of nowhere read Helen Stevenson's captivating memoir...a fascinating insight into Mediterranean life, history and habits, as well as a very witty, moving account of the ups and downs of living and falling in love in a strange place'

Sainsbury's Magazine

'Part memoir, part travelogue, part romance...Stevenson's prose is elegant, her descriptive powers provocative'

Irish Independent

'Begins as instructions for holidaying guests arriving at the author's house. But soons he is turning her novelist's eye on the town's characters...The result is as voyeuristically pleasurable as rooting through the owner's letters and photo albums in a rented cottage'

The Sunday Times

'What begins as a superior lyrical travel guide transforms into a tender love story and a very personal memoir of a disastrous affair'

Good Housekeeping

'A startlingly original work'

Harpers & Queen

'Clever, gripping and elegantly written'

Michele Roberts, Independent

'Well-written, realistic and convincing...her observations and acute and often charming and funny...miles better than Peter Mayle'

Angela Lambert

As beguiling and as enigmatically seductive a piece of writing as you could ask for . . . A beautifully tactile and reflective meditation on the outsider's experience of a community.

Elizabeth Buchan, The Times

'In Helen Stevenson's memoir of an ill-fated love affair...sex and gossip help pass the ime. There are affairs, but also histrionic jealousy, melodramatic bust-ups and any amount of unrequited lust...A plausible and sometimes affectionate portrayal of one slice of French life'

Independent on Sunday