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Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia by: Chris Stewart List Price: £6.99 City Travel Guides Price: £5.49 You Save: £1.50 (21%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 910 EAN: 9780953522705 ISBN: 0953522709 Label: Sort of Books Manufacturer: Sort of Books Number Of Pages: 256 Publication Date: June 03, 1999 Publisher: Sort of Books Studio: Sort of Books Sales Rank: 4672 Related Items:
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Editorial Review: Amazon.co.uk Review: All Provenced out? Then head further south, to the breathtaking mountainous climes of Andalucia. Just don't be squeamish about driving over lemons. Chris Stewart, skilled sheep-shearer and sometime Genesis drummer, took one look at the Alpujarrás, the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and decided that's where he wanted to be. This is the story of his adventures coming to terms with the terrain, the lifestyle and, of course, the locals, who possess all the rugged, homespun charm you'd expect. Stewart soon discovers all the hidden foibles of his bargain purchase, and spends the following year (rendered here in detail) installing the little luxuries of life like, say, water. However, just when you're worrying that all this might degenerate into a rose-tinted Englishman-finds-nature idyll, Chris's wife enters the fray. Nonsense-free, straight-talking and relentlessly unsentimental, Ada should be a required resource for all travel writers. Ada gets bored with the fake machismo of pig-killing, Ada sees through the selfless "help" of the natives, Ada calls a peasant a peasant. With her on board, Stewart has the perfect counterbalance to his declared optimism, and Driving over Lemons becomes a loving but clear-sighted encomium, economically and wittily written, to a wonderful part of the world. --Alan Stewart Review: It sounds an unlikely story: you retire as the drummer in the band Genesis (at 17), become a sheep shearer, dabble in travel writing and move - from Sussex to a dilapidated farm south of Granada, Spain, with no running water, no electricity and some distinctly odd neighbours. But for Stewart and his wife, who bought El Valero for 25,000 and has never looked back, it's all been worth it. Meet Domingo, the endearing neighbour who helps Stewart to learn to tend his newly acquired farm; and Pedro and Maria, the couple who are only too glad to leave El Valero for the comforts of town. A quirkier, younger man's A Year in Provence, this describes what it is like to leave behind the securities of home and to build your dream from scratch. (Kirkus UK) A delightful British bestseller that harnesses the narrative of a cosmopolitan familys adoption of traditional rural life in a timeless foreign culture to an examination of the greater issues of place, identity, and modernityall of it told with a wry self-deprecation in appealing, lushly descriptive prose. Following stints as a sheep shearer, travel writer, and itinerant farmer, Stewart persuaded his wife Ana to apply these skills (and their savings) toward the acquisition of El Valero, a rambling, decrepit farm with stone buildings and rudimentary access, electricity, and water in the remote Alpujarras region south of Grenada. Stewarts initial adventures are something of a rural Rakes Progress: he pays a wily landowner 25,000 for the farm, then endures a rambunctious apprenticeshiponly to hear the farmer boasting later on about how he fleeced a foreigner. Things improve when the intrepid couple plunge into renovation work at El Valerosecuring potable water and rebuilding bridges and stone wallsand then harvest its impressive bounty of olives, lemons, and peppers. Their further adventures include intermittently harrowing excursions into shepherding and sheep-dealing, survival of drought and floods, and (eventually) the raising of their daughter Chlo. Throughout, Stewart wisely approaches his subject with a panoramic lens: in crucial ways, his story is primarily concerned with the hardscrabble life and the tenuously maintained traditions of the regions native residents?who ultimately form mutually beneficial bonds of friendship and support with the newcomers. The works address of the subtly developing relationships between the Stewarts and the established communityand its implicit acknowledgment of thorny cultural collision and changeelevates it above the crowded realm of midlife-crisis exotica memoir. If comparisons to Peter Mayle are inevitable, Stewart maintains a warmly populist perspective in describing this more ramshackle, ungentrified terrain. While genuinely humorous and ultimately light in tone, this vivid, assured debut presents substantial questions about the endurance of rural, agrarian traditions in the face of a supposedly seductive postmodern, wired mass culture. (Kirkus Reviews) Giles Milton. Daily Telegraph, May 15 1999.: "An exquisite account of his life as a rustic sheep-farmer. The book, Driving Over Lemons, is so darn good that he is already being talked of within the publishing industry as the new Peter Mayle" Paul Callan. The Express. May 29th 1999.: "A book that is bound to become a literary hit." " Anthony Sattin. The Sunday Times. 30th May 1999: "A lyrical portrait of a couple integrating themselves in a traditional community in the Alpujarra mountains of Andalucia, one of Europe's most beautiful regions. Stewart's writing conveys his amiability . . .he has a particularly good ear for dialogue Penelope Lively. Daily Telegraph. 26th June 1999.: "I warmed to him. A man who buys a shack on the wrong side of a river on a barren mountainside in Andalucia, persuades his wife to take part in this folly and then sets up shop as the local sheep-shearer has to be respected. In Driving Over Lemons, the anecdote flourishes once more. . . Stewart's briskly robust style and lack of pretension keep the book rolling along." Elizabeth Buchan. The Times. 12th June 1999.: "When an author is as modest and humorous as this, it is a story that cannot be told too often. . .a quiet, sincere narration of putting his money where his mouth is. After all, fame and fortune beckoned in Genesis, and, no doubt, a mansion in Esher. Instead , on a hot night the family walk up to the pool in the river, set the candles on the rocks and slip into the water for a moonlit swim. No choice really." Brian Boyd. The Irish Times. 5th June 1999: "In chronicling the mood swings of a life less ordinary, the game Stewart has produced a delicious slice of rural verit, a book that serves as a more realistic and slightly funkier version of Peter Mayle's rather twee (in comparison) A Year in Provence. . . .Stewart went to Spain with no money and no cultural hang-ups and became a working farmer. . . a marvellous read throughout". Lyn Hughes. Wanderlust. June 1999: Every few weeks yet another book in which the author has bought a rustic idyll in Tuscany/France/Spain lands in our office. . .but it's rare for one to stand out from the pack. . ..Stewart manages to carve out a life and a good book. It's all told in a fresh and funny way and without recourse to over-dramatization. The story of shearing another farmer's sheep, and leaving pom-poms on their tails, in itself makes the book worth buying. Open a bottle of wine, nibble some olives and enjoy. Product Description: Meet Chris Stewart, the eternal optimist. At age 17 Chris retired as the drummer of Genesis and launched a career as a sheep shearer and travel writer. He has no regrets about this. Had he become a big-time rock star he might never have moved with his wife Ana to a remote mountain farm in Andalucia. Nor forged the friendship of a lifetime with his resourceful peasant neighbour Domingo ...nor watched his baby daughter Chloe grow and thrive there ...nor written this book. Fate does sometimes seem to know what it's up to. "Driving Over Lemons" is a book book that makes running a peasant farm in Spain seem like a distinctly good move. Chris transports us to Las Alpujarras, an oddball region south of Granada, and into a series of misadventures with an engaging mix of peasant farmers and shepherds, New Age travellers and ex-pats. The hero of the piece, however, is the farm that he and Ana bought, El Valero - a patch of mountain studded with olive, almond and lemon groves, sited on the wrong side of a river, and with no access road, water supply or electricity. Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Warning: This book is dangerous!This book is so well written and witty, describing an idylic life in Spain that I am sure many will be tempted to follow in Chris's and my own footsteps. I have been through the same story as this family, having lived in Spain for the past sixteen years, longer than Chris. I speak fluent Castellano, the same as him. My warning about his book is unless you can speak Spanish perfectly, you will never enjoy half the experiences described. If you are willing to learn the language, then "Driving Over Lemmons" is so good and an inspiration. If you are inspired and are up for it then Spain is still a good choice. My advice is read the book, learn to speak Spanish, enjoy and do the same. Wonderful read and a wonderful country. I am writting this ... Read More: Rating:  - Bad sheep and a running river . . . The odd title of this book refers to the citrus road hazards encountered by the author, Chris Stewart, on his inaugural house-hunting trip in Andalucía, where he is TOLD which house to buy (they do things differently in the mountains). Slowly settling into Pedro Romero's run-down farm (with Pedro who takes his time leaving!), this well written book tells the tale of his eventful first few years in the Alpujarrás. With his loyal wife Ana by his side, Stewart recounts all their experiences of errant sheep, dodgy farmers, flooded rivers, dried up rivers, and the sights and sounds of his new home with passion and warmth. As time passes, the house takes shape, friendships are made, particularly with his neighbour Domingo who ... Read More: Rating: - FantasticoAlmost every ex-pat of European nations here in Spain has read this enchanting book and recommends it to all their friends. The characters exist, the lifestyle still exists. For those who have never experienced old-world Spanish life here is your chance. And for those of us here in Spain, we know these people, they are our Spanish neighbours who always keep us on our toes!! Rating: - Andalucian escapism ...Good book for the holidays - especially if you're going to the part of Spain that the book is based in - similar in style to Carol Drinkwater's the Olive Farm, but a little more realistic and less "bordering-on-the-fanciful". Both books will make you want to move out of England. Rating: - A little ....An average story about an average guy doing what is now an average thing written in an average style with average narrative, average description, average warmth, average humour, average drama - it left me, well, feeling a little average |
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