Nice find from Edinburgh's wonderful bookshop Waterstone's. Paperback by Sort of Books, 223 pages.

Synopsis:

"Three years on, A Parrot in The Pepper Tree follows the lives of Chris, Ana and their daughter, Chloé, on their farm, as they get to grips with a misanthropic parrot who joins their home, Spanish school life, neighbours in love, journalists beating a path to their door... and the shock of discovering that their beloved valley might once more be under threat of being engulfed by a dam.

A Parrot in The Pepper Tree also looks back on Chris Stewart's former life _ the hard times shearing in midwinter Sweden (and driving across the frozen sea to reach island farms); his first taste of Spain, learning flamenco guitar as a 20-year old; and his illustrious music career, drumming for his school band Genesis (saked at 17, he never quite became Phil Collins), and then for Sir Robert Fossett's circus."

A long time has passed since I read Stewart's first book Driving Over Lemons, so it took some time to remember the scenes of their Andalucian home. I found the beginning of this book, the Swedish sheep shearing experiences, quite amusing, but otherwise I was not laughing out loud with this. I enjoyed reading about life on the Spanish countryside and the funny stories about interacting with the local villagers and would have hoped even more of these. Now it was much about the writer himself pondering and reflecting on his own goals, attitudes and similar and how those have changed over the years.

In any case I am glad to have the next book The Almond Blossom Society waiting on my shelf, I am going the pick it up for reading right away as the Andalucian spirit is still strong on my mind :).

I will take this book to the meet-up to look for new readers there.

Taking part in PRKL-haaste # 4.

Couldn't resist this travel book at the local meet-up this evening... Looks like an interesting reading.

I liked this sequel more than the first one. This was more coherent and of course it was easier to relate to things when the main characters were already familiar. At times I just had to laugh, it was so funny, especially the story about Sweden. I read Driving over Lemons Finnish so maybe the translation partly lost something along the line because reading this one English made it easier to feel the story.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Kirja lähtee tänään chanialle.

Thanks Em, I am sure I will like this!

I liked this book very much, maybe even more than Driving over Lemons. It took me deeper into the life in Andalucia. Very nice!

Sending to Kirjakko next.

Thanks for sending this, Chania, I'm looking forward to reading it soon. Anyone who has suffered in Sweden is a soulmate of mine...
I did like Driving Over Lemons (read it in Finnish, though) and it wasn't that long when I read it, so ought to remember the main characters. And do we actually get to read about Genesis, which was only mentioned on the back cover the previous book?