Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another belter, 21 Oct 2008
I read Anna Nicholas's last book and made a total fool of myself by laughing out loud in public, so i had high hopes for this one too. I'm delighted to say I wasn't disappointed. I've stayed in the little corner of paradise where the book is set, and it was totally bizarre because everywhere you go there are copies of the book for sale - i think she's become a local celebrity. If you are looking for a good laugh with some truly poignant moments thrown in - then this is the book for you.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The point of view of a local, 21 Aug 2008
I bought this book at Calabruix, my hometown bookshop in Sóller, now Anna Nicholas hometown. Years ago I had read "My Family and Other Animals" by Gerald Durrell, and had the hunch that this book was going to turn out something similar but happening in the mountains of Mallorca nowadays instead of Corfu in the 1930's. Well, the book is obviously different but equally delightful. Anna Nicholas is in Sóller to stay, not as a "blown in", and has become part of the valley, not just by loving its nature but mostly by understanding its people and their way of living. By sharing their way of living. Of course, she finds shocking things, just the same we find them when we go abroad, but she is really open minded (maybe her crazy job as PR has helped her with that) and takes full advantage of our innate curiosity and hospitallity towards foreigners, which by the way was severely put to test years ago with an invasion of a certain kind of Germans which seemed to be willing to impose the power of money on everything.
But this is what I feel after reading the book. The first chapter was not too promising for me. Sheep causing hassle is too a frequent situation here to be worth writing about it!! But it got better and better till I found myself laughing loudly at the author's surprise to what is here quite a normal thing: you invite four people for lunch and suddenly they come with 4 people more. But she has just enough food for four and has to borrow from a neighbour who by the way ends having lunch there as well. It was so fun finding out that British people make no provision for such a normal thing!
How the author manages to meet such strange people in her PR job is quite happy for the book, because in this way the blend between UK and Mallorca chapters works like the structure of a best seller and so the book reads really easily, even for me and my troubles understanding the colourful English the author is using.
The only thing a little bit missing is the sea. The author seems to live "with her back to the sea" as we say here, although it is still a quite normal attitude among the locals. This said, the only chapter dealing with the sea is also very funny, although it happens in Palma, not in Sóller.
All in all, a delightful book, now I'll have to read "A lizzard in my luggage". Thank you Anna for this fresh insight into Sóller.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious, life enhancing and moving...The journey continues, 30 Jul 2008
I was so delighted, one evening whilst browsing on Amazon, to happen acrosss this new instalment of Anna's life both in the Soller valley and way beyond it, including, this time, Manhattan. First and foremost it's a wonderful, and very pacy read - full of quirky, sometimes crazy, stories, but also with more tender moments. I was struck in particular by her perilous encounter with the "problem feline" Zack the Cat during her cattery training session deep in rural England; and by her vivid, breathtaking reportage of the New York Marathon, which she tackled and completed, in blazing heat, despite coping with a significant leg injury - and she even manages to find an attic humour in that story too!
Yet, these are not just delightful individual stories: they are subtly sewn together to paint a thoroughly convincing picture of a woman clearly at a crossroads in her life, increasingly being seduced by the simplicity, the pared down beauty, and the sheer charm and eccentricity of the Mallorcean way of life.
But, and it's an important but, the author never tries to paint her rural Mallorca as a utopia...She in-fact gives an even fuller, more direct account, of the ups and downs of Soller Valley, than in her previous book, "A Lizard in my luggage". It is made very clear that this is one place where death and life intermingle, and on a small island the losses and the tragedie are in-fact felt or the more keenly.
All in all, I so enjoyed this book: for its sheer energy, its great sense of fun, its powerful contrasts, and its gentle determination not to shirk in any way life's sadnesses and losses as well as life's joys.
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