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Summary: Terrific story-telling
Review: I have read a number of "let's buy a tumble-down house in a foreign country and renovate it while we learn to live in a new /old culture" books, and this is the best of the lot. Annie Hawes is a great story-teller and made me laugh out loud at the characters and characterizations. I've given the book as a gift to my mother and various friends, and everyone unanimously loved it.
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Summary: Extra Virgin is the Greatest
Review: I have yet to read a book that hit home like this book did. Being married to an Italian for 16 years and visiting in-laws 8 times, I related to this book as if I wrote myself. It was delightful, funny, truthful, in such a loving way to the wonderful people of Italy. I highly recommend this book to anyone that has ever visited Italy, has Italian relatives or good friends. If you've been there, it's a wonderful connective experience, if you have relatives, it's a wonderful explanation for why things are as they are. I love this book and have recommended it to every Italian and non-Italian I know. Great Job, Annie!
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Summary: Dull
Review: I heard this title being read on the radio ( abridged ) . It was fine . The book OTOH , is long winded , repetitive and hence quite dull . Mss. Hawes doesn't tell us much about herself , her own 'feelings' . It is a spectator game .
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Summary: One of the best in this genre...
Review: I picked up this book in the UK prior to a visit to Italy. I loved every page. It's witty and fun and transports the reader to the hills of Liguria. The copy I bought is titled, "Extra Virgin Amonst the Olive Groves of Liguria, a far better title than the one in the US. I believe it is the same book since the excerpts here are the same. Wonderful book. I hear she has another due out called Ripe For the Picking. Can't wait.
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Summary: Slow start, but riches follow.
Review: I read this book on a recommendation from a casual acquaintance and, despite the book's slow start, I'm glad I hung in there and gave it a chance. The beginning of the book shows Annie Hawes and her sister being swept along by the customs of daily Ligurian life. They bumble around amiably, and before long, they find themselves buying a broken-down house. The book starts to get interesting once the women are settled in the house and begin to cultivate relationships with the townspeople, Ligurian peasants who are charming and maddening by turns. Much is made of farming and food -- particularly the growing of olives and the process by which olive oil is made. The sisters' house is up a treacherous pathway, and we're told stories of years' worth of struggle to find a decent car, build a staircase connecting the floors of the house, hook up running water. These stories are told not with "money pit"-like out-and-out humor, but with a lightheartedness and a unique respect for preserving the rustic condition and context of the sisters' home. Even after the women have been living in Liguria for years, they are still regarded somewhat as _stranieri_, strangers, foreigners with odd ways. Yet they are trusted enough to be welcomed into homes all over the village. They learn the ways of the "hanky-headed" olive-farming men and get used to being mourned over for not having any husbands to work in the fields for them. The book takes place over a long period of time and, in that expanse, we see the Ligurian village go from a backwater to a flourishing center of olive oil production. We see Italian politics change, though not easily. We see the womens' friends grow old, move on, pass away. The dry English humor (I loved the Capital Letters that another reviewer found annoying) and heartfelt storytelling made me feel as though I had been welcomed into the village.
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Summary: So much better than that lady in Tuscany
Review: I think my title says it all: this book is tons better than that book about the lady who restores some pile of rubble in Tuscany.
Unlike that book, Ms. Hawes spends a bit less time sharing some mis-placed sense of entitlement and a bit more time examing the cultural differences which make integration into a new culture so difficult and eye-opening. I am amazed at her ability to get to know these people who are so different from her and her ability to depict their differences with out putting the Ligurians down or making fun of their culture. I found it ended too soon. And having read it just as I was heading to Liguria for vacation made it even better. I highly reccomend this book.
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Summary: Italian village life
Review: I was lucky enough to pick up this book before setting off for two weeks in Liguria. Not only was I entertained by Extra Virgin, but the unfolding of her characters and their history was an wonderful way of learning about the food, culture and sense of community around us. We resisted the temptation to go looking for San Pietro village but understood more of what was happening in the village we were in. A fabulous, funny and realistic read. Fortunately the edition we bought didn't have that terrible subtitle!
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Summary: Best of the Genre!
Review: I've read many travel books on Europe, Italy in particular, and this book beats them all without question. Hawes' writing style is incredibly enjoyable to read, full of the detailed and lively descriptions you'd expect. She does not romanticize with sugary sweet language as many other authors do. Instead, this book goes beyond the typical travel essay in a number of ways, not the least of which is Hawes' dry sense of humor that made me laugh aloud dozens of times.
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Summary: Transplanting a bit of England in the olive groves
Review: If ever you've dreamed of establishing residence in a foreign country, but have never had the nerve to actually do it, then EXTRA VIRGIN is a delightful escape for you, the armchair expatriate. In 1983, Annie Hawes and her sister Lucy, two young, single English lasses, accept employment as rose grafters on the Italian Riviera in the small town of Diano San Pietro. The fact that the author, Annie, knew nothing about rose grafting possibly reflects youth's eternal optimism. In any case, the rose season over, the two sisters are gently maneuvered by a crafty local into purchasing a derelict farmhouse amidst the olive groves above the town. The book spans at least a decade's worth of memories, and it's not always clear when in that timespan a particular incident occurred. However, it doesn't matter. One of the delights of EXTRA VIRGIN is the personality of Annie. She comes across as a genuinely Nice Person, and with that dry British wit that I personally find so engaging. The reader is invited into her life as she and Lucy labor to refurbish their new home and tidy up - an understatement - their neglected garden and terraced olive groves. And, all the while, coping with the eccentricities, prejudices and habits of their Ligurian neighbors, and vice versa, as the two cultures meet and meld. By the end of the book, Annie and Lucy have successfully become an accepted part of their adopted community. The book may drag a little in the last couple of chapters. Beforehand, however, we learn from Annie how olives are harvested and olive oil produced, as well as how local wine is made and mushrooms gathered. (The Italian love of food, in gargantuan quantities, is well portrayed.) And let's not forget the tales of the abandoned Morris, the matchless benefits of powdered lime, the water tank, and, during the tidying-up of the garden, ...the Snake: "This horrible thing appeared to me as I was sitting under the lemon tree ... gazing focused and abstracted at the foliage below me moving gently in the sea breeze... One tall stalk that seemed oddly out of rhythm with the rest gradually drew my attention... Some sinister kind of long skinny snake was sitting among the tall grass, waving its top half around, cunningly camouflaged as a bit of plant life and hoping, I suppose, to catch some unwary plump insect... not just a concealed snake, but an actively duplicitous snake. We didn't need any of that sort of behavior so close to home... We set off a-sickling with renewed vim and mild hysteria, stamping about heavily to scare off serpent life as we went." I wish I could meet Annie. I think I'm a little in love with her.
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Summary: Another engaging expatriate memoir
Review: If you're a fan of Peter Mayle, Frances Mayes, and Chris Stewart, add Annie Hawes to your reading list. At first skeptical about the subject ("Not ANOTHER book about moving abroad and fixing up an old house in the country!"), I was immediately enchanted by Hawes's take on it. Her style is closer to Mayle than Mayes, mostly because of her wonderful British wit and turning of a phrase, so Italy is described in a different way; and her rendering of the rural landscape and its inhabitants match Stewart's in detail and affection. Even if you've read a lot of books on Italy and expats living in sunny Mediterranean climes, crack "Extra Virgin". You won't be disappointed!
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