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Summary: Marvelous book, great read.
Review: A real gem, interestingly written. I cannot wait to read the sequel, "Ripe For The Picking," unfortunately not on amazon in the US but from amazon.uk!
I'll be ordering three or four additional copies of "Extra Virgin" to fill stockings this Christmas. Terrific little book, very highly recommended. You will want to up and move to the village she describes no more than 100 pages into the book.
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Summary: heartless author
Review: Alhough growing up in the New York Metropolitan area I knew many people of Italian decent, this book really put things into perspective, I really feel like I was there. Like another reviewer commented I would love to see a sequel. My only critism is the authors total reluctance to display emotion. She is very objective and she could have shown a little more feeling for these characters who I came to know and love while reading about them.
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Summary: italian adventures -- and not a la frances mayes
Review: Annie Hayes' view of Italy is far from the dappled, sensuous quality that has defined that "other" book about newcomers (and subsequent converts) to the beauty of Italy. Mayes' books excel in recalling the fabulous foods, landscapes, neighbors and gossamer days of Tuscany. Extra Virgin does that, too, but here's the difference -- Hayes' book goes deeper. She and her sister make mistakes. A lot of them. They don't instantly assimilate. The farmlands of Liguria are a far cry from the rolling and tourist-friendly hills of Tuscany, and the townsfolk, puzzled by these seemingly naive English girls, give them hard-knock lessons on the road to becoming honorary Italians. Whereas the Mayes series focus on the earthly pleasures of Italy, Extra Virgin is about character -- from the social protocol amid the local gentry at the village coffee shop to the laughs the sisters endure when they take another helping of antipasti or primi (shame on them!) Here is an outsider's honest, non-academic attempt to dissect the prejudices between Northern & Southern Italians -- to probe their grudges and prejudices -- and maybe even bend the rules a little (never too much!) Yet the reader never gets the sense that the Italians aren't warm to the author -- on the contrary, despite the occasional playful ridicule they are portrayed as kind, generous, resourceful, rugged, and hardworking. Hayes conveys the idea that Italy and Italian culture can be as foreign and oftentimes preposterous as our own culture appears to us. I'm half Italian and found this book very valuable in showing me the character of my forefathers (and my Italian-American mother!) It also serves as a terrific and necessary guidebook cloaked in a travelogue -- it has the fantasy aspect of moving to Italy, but it's done with a heaping dose of reality. I would recommend Extra Virgin to anyone intending to visit Italy -- to grasp what it means to be fully immersed in things Italian. Haye's recipe? Go with a healthy dose of respect, a lot of humor and keep on hand the odd dash of scepticism wherever necessary. That's Italian!
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Summary: A real-life look at living abroad
Review: Don't let the soppy title fool you - Extra Virgin is an excellent memoir of the author's life in small-town Italy. Annie Hawes has created a down-to-earth (and back-to-the-earth) book that, in addition to an excellent description of life in Liguria, gives a close up look at topics we can all relate to: learning to maintain and improve that first house, fitting in to a new place, adjusting to new customs.Probably the main strength of the book, though, is Hawes' portrait of her adopted home town and its changes through the years. She has lived at least half the year in Diano San Pietro for 20 years; she's become at least as Ligurian as English, while her town has become more modern and continental - but only a bit. Reading about Hawes' transformation, I learned along with her - about the excellent reasons behind some of the strange peasant beliefs, about the culture and society of rural Northern Italy, and about the everyday life of a small Italian town. In the background are other stories, equally involving: the small gossips, scandals, and events of 20 years in one place. One of Hawes' virtues is to make her neighbors and friends seem real, with real-person traits and flaws, rather than merely colorful characters, especially as time progresses within the book. The book itself is a pleasant, fun read. Hawes writes with a lot of gentle and mostly self-directed humor, and her style is breezy and light. It's easy to identify with her, also, both because of the style and because of the life she describes; I felt less a spectator and more a sympathizer in her struggles and delights. All in all, Extra Virgin is one of the most enjoyable and knowledgeable living-in-Italy books I've read to date, and it lacks the self-conscious, overblown prose stylings that have rendered some similar books less engaging. I would recommend this to anyone who loves Italy or travel; it's a book worth reading and owning.
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Summary: discover italy
Review: Forget Francis Mayes and all the other travel narratives about Italy - this one is funnier, sweeter, younger and hipper. Great book, hard to put down and you'll feel sad when it's over. Wonderful characters and good writing.
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Summary: Loved it!
Review: Great, enjoyable read. Lets you experience a wonderful dream - having a life on the Italian riviera. What's more, these girls did it on zero budget! A great book that lets you dream it could happen to you.
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Summary: Where every chapter is enchanted
Review: Hawes has written a truly enchanting story of a Brit in Liguria. She arrives a naive tourist, looking to make a long summer out of a job she knows nothing about and lied to get. She ends up owning a home, or rather a country place, before the end of the summer. Hawes learns a great deal over the next several years from the locals. In her learning she uses her naivete of the region to amuse the reader and ends up admitting that her impressions of the locals at the start was incomplete and incorrect. Her prose is good and her discourse with the locals retold well. Deserves a better fate than on the remainder table where I found it.
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Summary: So Exciting!
Review: I bought this book after a quick trip through the book store while on a vacation that needed a book. I was so excited to discover how much I loved this book! Not only was the story fun and exciting (& true), but I learned so much about the customs in italy and a lot about food. More than once I jumped off the couch and ran to the garden to gather basil and tomatoes. This book has been back and forth across the country more than once and deserves a second read.
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Summary: Hard to get into...
Review: I bought this book with the hopes of enjoying it while sitting on the beach. Perhaps the genre wasn't exactly my idea of 'beach read' material -- I ended up trekking to the bookstore for another book. However, I did come back to Extra Virgin -- just couldn't get the characters and their adventures out of my mind. As a result, I'll buy the sequel. It just wasn't as much of a page turner as I had hoped.
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Summary: Hanky-heads, grappa, campagna, rustico, olive harvest, etc.
Review: I enjoyed this book written about their living experience on the Italian Riveria. I loved reading about the "hanky-head" characters of this town. I could almost taste the food they ate when they described it. This book also explained a lot to me about the way Italians eat. I visited Italy [Rome, Florence] in 2001 and could not understand whey the waiter gave me a strange look when I asked for more cream/milk for my American coffee after I had just finished eating dinner. Now I understand about the digestio system here. If I ever go back to Italy, I will be sure to get an espresso instead after dinner. I wish I could visit a small down like the one the sisters live in and experience the olive harvest. There were so many episodes in this book that were so funny and some that were very serious. I would love for them to do a sequel to this book.
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