Bergère des collines par Florence Robert

Abstract

Reviewed by: Bergère des collines par Florence Robert Ann Williams Robert, Florence. Bergère des collines. José Corti, 2020. ISBN 978-2-7143-1235-8. Pp. 208. This is a true story. As such, it carries within it the weight and depth of lived experience. This is also the stuff of myth. And for this reason, it brings to the reader a sense of familiarity but within a larger-than-life context. Florence Robert left city life to become a shepherd. This is not a romanticized abandonment of modernity but shows rather how one person joined a different kind of space, timeless and yet a part of the modern world: the difficult land of the garrigues in southwest France. And to what end? To raise sheep, to practice conservation grazing and to live in harmony with her world view and her world. Sheep, herd dogs and Florence Robert are the main characters. The latter is drawn to the region and is not fleeing tragedy or pushing contemporary life away. She is making a conscious choice to live differently. Far from naïve, Florence goes through rigorous training to make the transition to her new profession. She knows that her work with animals in her care will be a question of life and death and that her work with the land will bring it back to health. Picture overgrown scrubland where everything struggles to grow in the dry heat of summer and suffers in the cold of winter. Now picture a young woman, mostly on her own. Imagine the preparation: building cabins, out-buildings and fences with the aid of friends, family, and inhabitants of the region, so willing to help. Solar panels and water, animal feed and medicines, courage and strength are required to make this life possible. The first herd, one hundred ewes, arrives: "L'aventure prend ainsi forme d'une manière irréversible et plus que concrète" (26). The book is organized in journal form, where reference to dates and months remind us that this is still a world where humans have broken time into chunks. However, the true, underlying flow of the narrative is in the passage from night to dawn and dawn to dusk and the changing of seasons and the birth, the living, and the dying of the animals. The writing style itself underlines the variety of our narrator's experience. Poetic passages such as that describing the arrival of Spring—"L'éclosion est partout nubile, tendre de chair" (90)—are juxtaposed with the choppy notations of an exhausted woman faced with administrative tasks: "inventaire annuel de troupeau, carnet d'agnelage, carnet sanitaire, bons de circulation, comptabilité" (92). The author's decision to give readers an account of year one and then "ten years later" is also significant. She did not give up. Ten years later she is still a bergère des collines. She is a mentor and still a student of the nature she has espoused. She demonstrates in this book that we can take care of that which is within our reach. It has been within her reach to live this experience and to write. Both—it is clear—are done with great care. [End Page 241] Ann Williams Metropolitan State University of Denver (CO) Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French