Mirabelle Pickers

In this beautifully translated memoir Jacques Reda chooses the height of the mirabelle season in Lorraine for a long-delayed visit to his home town, Luneville. For France's distinguished "poete flaneur" – motorized for such occasions on his antiquated Solex moped – the fragrant allure of plums marks the start of a series of impressions, encounters and musings that will take us in eight chapters from Friday Evening to Tuesday Morning, through a remembered topography that has largely shaped a lifetime's writing. Reda retraces childhood routes – scrupulously avoiding, at first, the street where he lived – and renews acquaintances along the way. These encounters convey vivid particulars while at the same time registering the visitor's preoccupation – often whimsical – with the passing of the years and their inevitable end-point.