Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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67 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Makes you want to be there among the Olive Groves, 20 Jun 2005
Having read the two previous books I was eagerly awaiting a follow up and was pleased to find that this book was available just in time for my holiday! I find Carol Drinkwaters writing style to be easy to read and enthralling with beautifully written descriptions of the south of France, nature and life and its emotions. Carol and Michel have again returned to Appasionata, the Olive Farm that they have restored, and Carol is eager to continue production of the olives and attain their cerificate for producing Organic Oil. However their plans for an idyllic summer are thwarted by various events and it seems for a time that all is lost and cannot be regained. Old familiar characters like the dogs and Monsieur Q the gardener are present as are new friends like the apiarists (beekeepers) and the hunters with whom Carol spends an exhausting day hunting in the mountains (nearly killing herself into the bargain!) The ongoing saga of the Olive trees' life throughout the changing year within the changing landscape and the life and relationships affecting Carol make this a book which is compulsive reading , I found it difficult to put down and would certainly recommend it as holiday reading . It certainly makes you want to be there... to feel the fresh warm air , hear the bees, smell the scents and pollens and eat the lovely food that is produced!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Discovering olives!, 20 Sep 2007
I am just discovering these books. I started with The Olive Route which I thought was terrific and then I read this one. She writes so well that I feel as though I am there with her, sharing her stories, living the adventures. I can feel the Mediterranean from her descriptions and I thought this one was so sensitive too
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4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A bit of a muddle, 13 Oct 2008
I feel terrible writing this as someone who grew up with and loved All Creatures Great and Small, because I am sorry to say that this book should never have found its way into print in its current state. I should add that I have just read the hardback edition for our bookclub, so some of the hilariously glaring errors may have been tightened up a little. Bees are not, for example, "furry anthropods". Anthropod is a word that Carol made up herself, probably meaning arthropod, but which conjures up a really quite bizarre image in my mind -- bees with little human legs? How cool would that be?! Bees are described in three different ways within a page, yet each word is invariably prefixed by the word "furry". How could the editor let this, and the many other instances of "creative-writing-evening-class" style, go unchecked?
Carol is not averse to conjuring up some bizarre comparisons (when did you last immediately have the image of otters swimming through liquid metal when looking at a stream?). The book is littered with these slightly bizarre "called to mind" moments.
Carol seems to live in a world where people speak in really quite a florid and unnatural way -- I can't believe that the conversations are reported as they happened most of the time. Perhaps I'll run into Carol in a Mougins cafe one day -- it'd be interesting to see how she comes over in person, or whether she really talks the way she writes conversation (and how I imagine it sounds) -- RP and stilted like a 1940s British movie!
Another rather irritating feature is Carol's insistence that we need the odd French word slipped into the narrative... along the lines of we were preparing our petit dejeuner, when in fact I would personally have been happy enough to know that it was breakfast being prepared. If pushed, I probably could have done without knowing that interesting fact! However, mixing of languages in this sense doesn't add to the flow of the narrative.
Carol also enjoys slipping in "facts" every so often to bolster the story line. I wouldn't like to swear that these are always 100% accurate. I also found them slightly patronising in some places. Again -- a break in the narrative flow that was not always welcome.
Some parts of the book (the trip to the Camargue) are dull to the point of tears and characters are introduced who seem pointless and do not engage. I think that it reads like a diary that has been quickly knocked together to add an extra chapter.
On top of all that she is trying to fit into a "rural" French commununity (I know the area around Opio very well, in fact from the description I can probably guess that she lives in the Grasse, Maganosc area), which is actually fairly upwardly mobile, close to Cannes and Nice. I can't help but feel that the whole "rural struggling to make ends meet" aspect is being played up a little. She is actually sitting on a hugely valuable piece of real estate in the middle of, if not a millionaires play ground, then certainly a rich persons playground. Therefore interesting aspects of how traditional French life in the Alpes Maritimes has been squeezed and compromised by the influx of rich foreigners and urban growth are not really covered in a sensible way. Wild boar penetrate the region deeply, and have to be controlled in areas where protected olive trees are planted (and in that area you are in big trouble if you root up an olive tree). She wears her anti-hunting/sanctity of life feelings on her sleeve yet goes into a description of a beef sausage in the Camargue. I would ask her to describe how exactly the beef sausage was made without an animal being harmed in the process!
Finally, and again I do feel like I am kicking a puppy here, Carol does not come across at all sympathetically. She is a bundle of neuroses which she is disarmingly honest about, however the book reads like its been written for therapy. She simpers and flits her way from crisis to crisis. She appears to be so chaotic in her approach to living and writing that I find it difficult to believe in her as a reliable narrator. We never really understand whether Michel leaves her because of a character change following a head injury or whether he just couldn't stand being around her for a moment longer!
A year in Carol's life is dissected in spectacular detail, yet the potentially more interesting second year when Michel returns is skimmed over in a matter of pages at the end. Somewhat rushed given the pace of the book to that point -- publishers deadline perhaps? Overall, I'm afraid that this book has contractual obligations and publisher deadline written all over it. I am not tempted to read the previous books by Carol, but know that they are liked and well-reviewed.... just not for me.
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