Winewoman

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Winewoman

Winewoman@Bergerac.France

Category:	Self-Help
Author:	Helen Gillespie-Peck
Publisher:	Melrose Books
Price:	£16.99
ISBN:	0-954848-09-8
Pages:	240
Reviewed in issue:	2

This is a nice book, badly let down by appalling presentation. Helen Gillespie-Peck takes you on a whistle-stop tour of the main wine-producing areas of France, and shares what is obviously a deep knowledge and love of her subject. But there is a spelling mistake or inconsistency on nearly every page, and I became more preoccupied in finding this page’s cock-up than in following the thread of the text.

It wasn’t helped by the fact that Ms Gillespie-Peck has a way of writing as she thinks, and this ‘stream of consciousness’ prose makes her sound like a teenager writing a letter at times, with too many exclamation marks to end a sentence. It just gets annoying.

This is such a shame, as otherwise this is an informative and pleasing book, with plenty of interesting and amusing anecdotes. At times it couldn’t quite decide whether it was a history book, a Peter Mayle-style depiction of life in France, or a wine-taster’s handbook: but compared to the faults of presentation these were minor quibbles.

A good book, ruined by the absence of a good proofreader.

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