A Season for That

Lost and Found in the Other Southern France

By: Steve Hoffman

Narrated by: Steve Hoffman

In this poignant, delicious memoir, American tax preparer and food writer Steve Hoffman tells the story of how he and his family move to the French countryside, where the locals upend everything he knows about food, wine, and learning how to belong.

Steve Hoffman is a perfectly comfortable middle-aged Minnesotan man who has always been desperately, pretentiously in love with France, more specifically with the idea of France. To follow that love, he and his family move, nearly at random, to the small, rural, scratchy-hot village of Autignac in the south of the country, and he immediately thinks he’s made a terrible mistake. Life here is not holding your cigarette chest-high while walking to the café and pulling off the trick of pretending to be Parisian, it’s getting into fights with your wife because you won’t break character and introduce your very American family to the locals, who can smell you and your perfect city-French from a mile away.

But through cooking what the local grocer tells him to cook, he feels more of this place. A neighbor leads him into the world of winemaking, where he learns not as a pedantic oenophile, but bodily, as a grape picker and winemaker’s apprentice. Along the way, he lets go of the abstract ideas he’d held about France, discovering instead the beauty of a culture that is one with its landscape, and of becoming one with that culture.

©2024 Steve Hoffman (P)2024 Random House Audio

Felt I was there

Hoffman's travel memoir belongs in the league of Frances Mayes and Peter Mayle. I will be relisteneing to this one. He was the perfect narrator.

So relatable

Fabulous book and fabulous reading by the author. Whether you approach it as a lover of food, wine, France, or simply as a parent, I expect you will find pieces of yourself here. I know I did.

Genuine

This book was an absolute delight to read. It felt as though Steve had returned from his time abroad and was bursting with excitement to share all his experiences with me. I was completely engrossed in the story. While my love for France, passion for wine, and my time living there undoubtedly influenced my emotional response to the book, it was solely because the author has a deep understanding of the country, beauty of winemaking, and a remarkable talent for capturing its essence in writing. Well done!

Wonderful memoir, wonderfully read!

Starts off seeming a bit too earnest, until you realize that’s just the nature of the narrator, soon enough the listener gets pulled into his world. He writes beautifully and engagingly and at the end of each chapter you find yourself wanting to keep listening to just tone more. I wound listening to the entire book over the course of one day. He reads it beautifully as well. Wonderful memoir!

Beautifully detailed memoir

5 stars for his writing and books read by the author are my favorite. This is a vulnerable exposé of what he went through to assimilate into his favorite country. His wife though! He does not judge her, just relates facts but she seems a dehumanizing harpy! She bullies the author so badly it's cringey. That said, his descriptors of the food, environment and characters immerse you in his experience.

Took me to France for a few hours

This memoir let me escape to France for a few wonderful hours, laughing at Steve’s winemaking endeavors & enjoying his cooking!

A gift of memories from the south of France

This book is a gift to those who want to travel and those who can only escape for a few hours to get lost in France thru another’s eyes..….Steve makes you smell and taste the south of France in your dreams ..

Much More Than How to Live in France!

Mr. Hoffman offers us so much more than a desire to move to France, speak French, and "become French." It is a journey that begins with his pursuit of a personal passion for France, includes his efforts to cook as the French do, and emerges with the learning about the intense process of wine making in the Languedoc region of France. Surprising even himself, he discovers the time in France becomes a testament to the essence being a good father and husband, This memoir is an example of amazing curiosity, self-introspection, and persistence. He dissects his personal life to the core, (along with most things) and shares his experiences with thoughtful metaphors. both entertaining and circumspect. I appreciated this vicarious journey. Thanks!

A Francophile’s love song to a little known corner of France

Step aside Year in Provence and the countless other American/Brit in France books. I enjoyed this more. It celebrates the Languedoc region of France - the food, wine, people, landscape, culture - in such a lovely, thoughtful, and appreciative way that I fell in love with it too. Beautifully written and well performed.

loved the prose and lessons

beautifully written, loved the prose, loved the lessons, had me laughing and crying at times. I didn't want it to end!