My Good Life in France

In Pursuit of the Rural Dream

By: Janine Marsh

Narrated by: Esther Wane

Length: 6 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

One grey dismal day, Janine Marsh was on a trip to northern France to pick up some cheap wine. She returned to England a few hours later having put in an offer on a rundown old barn in the rural Seven Valleys area of Pas de Calais. This was not something she'd expected or planned for.

Janine eventually gave up her job in London to move with her husband to live the good life in France. Or so she hoped. While getting to grips with the locals and la vie Française, and renovating her dilapidated new house, a building lacking the comforts of mains drainage, heating, or proper rooms, and with little money and less of a clue, she started to realize there was lot more to her new home than she could ever have imagined.

Ten years ago, Janine Marsh decided to leave her corporate life behind to fix up a run-down barn in northern France. This is the true story of her rollercoaster ride, in many ways a love story, with her sharp observations on the very different way of life, culture, and etiquette of France.

From her early struggles and homesickness through personal tragedy, to her attempts to become self-sufficient and to breed "the fattest chickens in the village", Janine learned that there was more to her new home than she could ever have imagined.

©2017 Janine Marsh (P)2018 Tantor

Easy to listen to for a Francophile

Quite a learning experience for Brits moving to northern France. I enjoyed the gardening and remodeling and all the customs they encountered. It was a well- rounded adventure and included acquiring four legged and two legged animals with compassion. The narrator made the French language sing and understandable to non-French listeners. Thank you for a good listening experience.

Really funny, delightful, informative

I really enjoyed the book. Great sense of humor throughout. She talks about the process of moving there, life events, customs, local traditions, in a casual story-telling style that keeps my attention.

This is about living in and fixing up a several-hundred-year-old house with a small area of land in a small village in the north of France. The couple moved there from England on a normal budget, not the Peter Mayle well-off Provence type. So it is more realistic for a normal couple.

I read Peter Mayle's books on Provence a while ago and wanted to find similar books about country living. While there are plenty of books about France, most of them are about the big city and/or not so interesting. This book was the type I was after.

Check out her modern website with the same name, you'll find a ton of information for expats and travelers!

"Under the Tuscan Sun," set in France

A sweet little tale about one woman's adventures in getting out of the London rat race and reinventing herself in the French countryside. A fixer-upper house, a new village, new customs, language, food, neighbors... this is a little bit like "Under the Tuscan Sun" except there's no divorce. Haha. Recommend this to anyone who hates their job and wants a mental escape for the morning or evening commute. It helped me for sure until I was able to take that job and shove it/retire. : )

This book is so true!

As an American living in the South of France, about as far South as you can go, I found the similarities to the North amazing. I was giggling a lot because it is so true! I adore France so much! If you want to know what life is like here this book is a must read! We love our good life too!

Enjoyable and fun

Lovely story, fun and pleasant. Lots of stories about the author’s interactions with her French neighbors.

Great road trip listen

An easy, entertaining audiobook for a road trip or vacation. Author is witty, and the reader pleasant to listen to.

Loved it!

Started a little slow for me, but then got more and more engaging! Makes me want to visit! Loved that her Dad, loved the neighbors, community, loved the last bit - advise!
And I love the narrator, Esther Wane!

Loved it

Excellent writing style. The narrator was fantastic. I loved the book. I have bought the next book as well.

Beauty of France

At times the book seemed to drag on but I stayed with it and was pleased. The author had a great way of getting me to picture the beauty she saw. Her humor throughout was what kept me going. The last chapter is the best but don’t skip ahead!

Very entertaining and inspiring story

The story is very entertaining and inspiring and brings back a lot of good memories of cycling through that region. It’s wonderful that there’s a book describing this overlooked region of France. But why couldn’t the writer have read this herself? Her jokes are funny, but they lose their punch by the way the narrator reads them. Also the narrator keeps stressing the wrong syllable when pronouncing the French words, really annoying! (Especially if you know that, according to a story towards the end of the book, the writer sometimes gets mistaken for a native speaker.)