Driving Over Lemons
3 journalers for this copy...
I love this review by Tony Palmer from encompassculture.com, so I am reprinting it here:
Driving Over Lemons' by Chris Stewart
My father-in-law recommended this book to me. I was looking for a good book on Spain to follow on from France. He is a big fan of travel writing. So I knew he’d be the man to recommend me a good book on Spain. He came up with thirty or forty books. I asked him to whittle it down. It wasn’t easy for him. He loves travel guides. And he loves Spain: his first grandchild was born there the day we were having this discussion. He made me a top ten Spain travel guides. British travel writers on Spain.
Richard Ford Handbook for Spain
Rose Macaulay Fabled Shore – from the Pyrenees to Portugal
Laurie Lee As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
Norman Lewis Voices of the Old Sea
Gerald Brennan The Face of Spain
Simon Courtard Spanish Hours
V S Pritchett The Spanish Temper
David Gilmore Cities of Spain
Jan Morris Spain
Chris Stewart Driving Over Lemons
I could take my pick. Having seen Driving Over Lemons read by every member of the family, I decided to go for that. Driving Over Lemons is the story of Chris Stewart and Ana who decide to buy a Spanish farm and live there. The book is about the people they meet – the locals and the other escapees from the rat race. Better than characters from novels, the people Stewart describes have many layers. They can be blunt, generous, disagreeable and, when it comes to it, friends to Chris and Ana. And Driving Over Lemons is as much about the animals that join the couple on their farm as it is about people. Invited and uninvited animals. Dogs, sheep, scorpions, cats and smaller, more vexing, creatures. Each animal comes with a story of its own. Often their stories are even more compelling than those of the people. Driving Over Lemons is a beautiful book.
Reading it, I wanted to be sat in a mountain cleft drinking cheap wine considering a days hard work building or working with animals. And, probably the main achievement of the book, is that I wouldn’t have minded sitting there with the author. His willingness to mock himself before all others makes his story all the more entertaining. But it’s not just an entertaining read. You learn – willingly – about the irrigation techniques, bridge building (literally and metaphorically) and sheep shearing. Amongst other things. Eventually another person moves in. Chloe – their daughter – is the last to join them in their Spanish idyll. The scenes of her birth and Christening bring the book to a moving end. Chris Stewart’s take on Spain is as affectionate about his adoptive country than any travelogue I have read. That’s what makes it such a success: it is a book showing us a country through the man, not a book showing us the man through the country.
Tom Palmer
3 June 2003
Driving Over Lemons' by Chris Stewart
My father-in-law recommended this book to me. I was looking for a good book on Spain to follow on from France. He is a big fan of travel writing. So I knew he’d be the man to recommend me a good book on Spain. He came up with thirty or forty books. I asked him to whittle it down. It wasn’t easy for him. He loves travel guides. And he loves Spain: his first grandchild was born there the day we were having this discussion. He made me a top ten Spain travel guides. British travel writers on Spain.
Richard Ford Handbook for Spain
Rose Macaulay Fabled Shore – from the Pyrenees to Portugal
Laurie Lee As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
Norman Lewis Voices of the Old Sea
Gerald Brennan The Face of Spain
Simon Courtard Spanish Hours
V S Pritchett The Spanish Temper
David Gilmore Cities of Spain
Jan Morris Spain
Chris Stewart Driving Over Lemons
I could take my pick. Having seen Driving Over Lemons read by every member of the family, I decided to go for that. Driving Over Lemons is the story of Chris Stewart and Ana who decide to buy a Spanish farm and live there. The book is about the people they meet – the locals and the other escapees from the rat race. Better than characters from novels, the people Stewart describes have many layers. They can be blunt, generous, disagreeable and, when it comes to it, friends to Chris and Ana. And Driving Over Lemons is as much about the animals that join the couple on their farm as it is about people. Invited and uninvited animals. Dogs, sheep, scorpions, cats and smaller, more vexing, creatures. Each animal comes with a story of its own. Often their stories are even more compelling than those of the people. Driving Over Lemons is a beautiful book.
Reading it, I wanted to be sat in a mountain cleft drinking cheap wine considering a days hard work building or working with animals. And, probably the main achievement of the book, is that I wouldn’t have minded sitting there with the author. His willingness to mock himself before all others makes his story all the more entertaining. But it’s not just an entertaining read. You learn – willingly – about the irrigation techniques, bridge building (literally and metaphorically) and sheep shearing. Amongst other things. Eventually another person moves in. Chloe – their daughter – is the last to join them in their Spanish idyll. The scenes of her birth and Christening bring the book to a moving end. Chris Stewart’s take on Spain is as affectionate about his adoptive country than any travelogue I have read. That’s what makes it such a success: it is a book showing us a country through the man, not a book showing us the man through the country.
Tom Palmer
3 June 2003
Reserved for Napper
Just got it in the mail - and so far its great (I'm 23 pages in)! Thanks Lotusflower!
A quick read - very absorbing. A bit too detailed about farming (lots of animal life cycle stuff I was too squeamish to read), but overall very evocative and enjoyable. I've never been to Spain but he makes it sound wonderful.
On its way in my travel bookbox...
This one leapt out of napper's bookbox into my hands, and I've replaced it with Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines. I'm already enthralled, and good thing, too. It's late at night--I've suffered insomnia lately. Now I'm sitting in the living room thinking about a friend who just had a heart transplant, and listening to the buzz of moths grinding themselves against a windowscreen for love of my small reading lamp. They can't believe they can't get to it. This book seems just the ticket for a nervous insomniac, being cheerfully subtitled "An Optimist in Andalucia."
It was the perfect insomniac book: No big life lessons, engrossing and comfortable, took me to a foreign place without making me think too hard. I loved the author's eager and game approach, and the way he seemed to slip into Andalucian neighborhood life. It's both appealing and outrageous, the whole idea of moving to a random Spanish farm, starting anew. That thought process isn't the focus of the book. The book is the slow learning, fraternizing, and slipping into that life: sheep farming, home-building, plant hunting, you know. The neighbors are all very lovingly portrayed, even the bad ones. The author seems a touch mad, but very charming. A great summer read.
Thanks again, Lotusflower (who once sent me Tales of a Female Nomad) and napper. The photo at left shows the book looking right at home with my weird yellow teapot, which I love.
This went home to Toronto with my step-mom. Who promises to TRY to remember to TRY to visit the website and to TRY to release it when she's done. (I'll remind her) So after a brief vacation in New York, it's back to your home town, Lotusflower77!
