Peter Mayle wrote the novel that inspired Ridley Scott’s 2006 film A Good Year.
Mayle was an English author especially associated with Provence. His best-known book, A Year in Provence, was a humorous 1989 memoir about moving to the south of France and adapting to local life, food, weather, work habits, and rural customs. Those experiences helped establish his reputation as a writer of warmly comic Provence stories.
A Good Year was published as a novel in 2004. It follows Max Skinner, a London stockbroker who inherits his late uncle’s vineyard estate in Provence and gradually reconsiders his hurried, financially driven life. The book’s setting and wine-business plot appealed to Scott, who owned a home in Provence and had known Mayle.
The 2006 film stars Russell Crowe as Max and Marion Cotillard as Fanny Chenal. Screenwriter Marc Klein adapted Mayle’s novel, changing and expanding elements for the screen, so the film is based on Mayle’s book but is not a scene-for-scene reproduction. The title should not be confused with Mayle’s memoir A Year in Provence.