Book of the Week SMH/Age
- sherylebagwell
- Mar 2
- 1 min read
Updated: Mar 9
SMH/THE AGE Feb 28, 2026
NON-FICTION PICK OF THE WEEK
Letter From Provence
Sheryle Bagwell
Allen & Unwin, $34.99
Steven Carroll February 27, 2026
This is so much more than the usual run-of-the-moulin story about buying a house in rural France. In 2017, Bagwell and her husband did buy a place in a village in Provence, but what follows is multi-layered, cleverly structured and often very moving. It turned out that Madame de Sevigne, famous for her 17th-century letters to her daughter (lauded by Proust), lived and died in a nearby chateau for five years with her daughter, and she becomes a ghost-like presence in her tale.
Bagwell’s mother (who died at 42 and dreamed of going to Paris) is also an abiding one; Bagwell looks back on suburban Sydney from her room in Provence to her parents’ violent, unhappy marriage and the lifetime of baggage that came of it. All the challenges and rewards of village life, from difficult neighbours to the Mistral, frame the tale. Told in simple but such effective writing, it is essentially a daughter’s love letter to her mother, reversing the parallel narrative of de Sevigne’s letters to her daughter – both amplifying the central preoccupation of mothers and daughters.
- Steven Carroll. Sydney Morning Herald and The Age
Letter from Provence is Pick of the Week in SMH/The Age. Feb 27, 2026
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