Book review: All secrets great and small

'One Summer in Provence' is about relationships, betrayals, and secrets. It’s absorbing and will keep you guessing about some of those secrets to the end

Carol Drinkwater has written 25 books. A former actress, she is best known for the classic BBC series ‘All Creatures Great and Small’.

• One Summer in Provence 
• Carol Drinkwater 
• Corvus, €14.50

 Celia Grey seems to have the perfect life. She is married to Dominic, who she adores, and they are living on a vineyard they own in the south of France.

To celebrate the success of their wines after some challenging years, Celia decides to organise a party. 

When she receives a call from England from a stranger called David, who tells her he is the son she gave up when aged 20, she impulsively invites him to join their celebration. 

Unexpectedly, when David arrives, he’s not alone but accompanied by Gillian, a young woman.

Now Celia will have to tell Dominic about the baby she gave up before they met.

That’s not the only challenge she faces, she wants to get to know David and understand the relationship between him and Gillian. 

The latter is an irritating young woman; she is creative, but that is no excuse for her rudeness, nor her bad behaviour, including helping herself to Celia’s possessions.

For the first time, the Greys have invited two young men from overseas to help with the harvest as volunteers, Tom and Sean, the latter Irish. 

Getting to know how to manage them also concerns Celia.

She is a worrier and is always looking for the approval of others. 

She is so convincing a character that she is at times exasperating — she dithers, rather than making decisions, and she mislays objects such as her keys all the time.

She avoids confrontation so never questioned Dominic when she suspected his infidelity, and even when he is prepared to tell her the truth, she tries to stop him.

Does Dominic deserve her devotion or are her feelings for him more about her fear of being alone than she may be prepared to admit to herself? 

He is a dominant figure who doesn’t like it when he doesn’t get his own way, and he keeps putting her off when she says she needs to discuss something.

There is an age gap between them, and Celia looks up to him.

She was a successful actress until a play Dominic wrote in which she played the lead was a failure.

They had invested their own money in the production, so their loss was disastrous. It led to them moving to France where Celia had inherited the house and vineyard.

Since then, Dominic’s plays have been successful, leading to him also writing for the screen.

Their vineyard has prospered with the help of locals, who have taught them how to produce the best wine and how to look after their land.

The author’s warm portrayal of the people who the couple employ is one of the enjoyable aspects of the novel.

There are fascinating insights into the work involved in running a vineyard, and how to cope with challenging terrain. 

There are terrifying descriptions of a storm which wreaks havoc, and the effects on the vines is genuinely upsetting.

Its setting greatly contributes to making this novel memorable, with wonderful descriptions of their surroundings, the umbrella pines and cypresses which overlook the old house, and you can almost smell the soil baking in intense sun.

When Celia collects Sean and Tom from the airport, she stops to let them see “the Riviera hinterland. Laid out at their feet was a carpet of jutting rocks, olive trees, green oaks, pines, palms. It spread wide and rolled in a gentle fashion all the way to the bays and inlets of the Mediterranean …”

Ultimately the novel is about relationships, betrayals, and secrets. It’s absorbing and will keep you guessing about some of those secrets to the end.

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