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Subjects Not-at-home: Forms of the Uncanny in the Contemporary French Novel Emmanuel Carrère, Marie NDiaye, Eugène Savitzkaya

explains why a new wine drinking culture started to emerge in the 1970s. She argues that drinking wine, which used to be part of the staple diet of the urban and rural working class, has developed into a social and cultural marker for the middle class. This new culture has its own rituals and own complex language, often based on oenological and gastronomic knowledge: a growing number of specialised guides, magazines, television programmes and more recently websites contribute to its diffusion. Wine tasting clubs, wine fairs and wine festivals are the new sites of wine consumption, rather than cafés and bistros which are here conspicuous by their absence. The empirical data provided to support the argument dents some traditional representations of France which often prevail on this side of the Channel. Demossier indeed debunks some important myths, notably the existence of a homogeneous French national wine drinking culture and the supposedly natural knowledge that the French have about wine. She opposes the figure of the ‘wandering drinker’—who consumes wine occasionally, is often confused by the language of the experts and dreads to make a social faux pas in selecting the wrong wine (what Demossier defines as ‘vinanomie’)—to the figure of the wine lover for whom drinking wine is part of an identity building process and a search for social differentiation. The strength of this book, however, is to demonstrate that ‘wine culture is much more than drinking wine’ (p. 89) and, indeed, by highlighting different relationships between modes of consumption and identity, it provides a window on what it means to be French today. The author is particularly convincing when investigating discourses on rurality and regionalism in a postnational context and how the search for ‘authenticity’ appears as a response ‘against modernity and economic liberalisation’ (p. 116). Demossier’s sense of humour does no harm to the seriousness of her research: her cringing description of a rather unpleasant dinner in the Bordeaux region vividly exemplifies some crucial aspects of the new wine culture that she seeks to explain. It is thus unfortunate that many editorial slips remain as they annoyingly distract the reader from the argument, such as, informer/informant (p. 90), or ‘as she describes matters’ (?) (p. 177). Likewise, graphs are often difficult to read: for instance, it is virtually impossible to make sense of Figure 4.4 (p. 125). Nevertheless, the greatest asset of this volume is that, by analysing wine culture, Demossier offers fresh insights into multiple issues, and in the end, delivers what her introduction promises: ‘a new interpretation of the relationship between wine drinking culture and identity in an age of economic globalization and political change’ (p. 7).