Product Description

Meet Chris Stewart, the eternal optimist. At age 17 Chris retired as the drummer of Genesis and launched a career as a sheep shearer and travel writer. He has no regrets about this. Had he become a big-time rock star he might never have moved with his wife Ana to a remote mountain farm in Andalucia. Nor forged the friendship of a lifetime with his resourceful peasant neighbour Domingo…not watched his baby daughter Chloë grow and thrive there…nor written this book. Fate does sometimes seem to know what it’s up to. Driving Over Lemons is that rare thing: a funny, insightful book that charms you from the first page to the last…and one that makes running a peasant farm in Spain seem like a distinctly gd move. Chris transports us to Las Alpujarras, an oddball region south of Granada, and into a series of misadventures with an engaging mix of peasant farmers and shepherds, New Age travellers and ex-pats. The hero of the piece, however, is the farm that he and Ana bought, El Valero – a patch of mountain studded with olive, almond and lemon groves, sited on the wrong side of a river, with no access road, water supply or electricity. Could life offer much better than that?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77560 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
All Provenced out? Then head further south, to the breathtaking mountainous climes of Andalucia. Just don't be squeamish about driving over lemons. Chris Stewart, skilled sheep-shearer and sometime Genesis drummer, took one look at the Alpujarrás, the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and decided that's where he wanted to be. This is the story of his adventures coming to terms with the terrain, the lifestyle and, of course, the locals, who possess all the rugged, homespun charm you'd expect. Stewart soon discovers all the hidden foibles of his bargain purchase, and spends the following year (rendered here in detail) installing the little luxuries of life like, say, water.

However, just when you're worrying that all this might degenerate into a rose-tinted Englishman-finds-nature idyll, Chris's wife enters the fray. Nonsense-free, straight-talking and relentlessly unsentimental, Ada should be a required resource for all travel writers. Ada gets bored with the fake machismo of pig-killing, Ada sees through the selfless "help" of the natives, Ada calls a peasant a peasant. With her on board, Stewart has the perfect counterbalance to his declared optimism, and Driving over Lemons becomes a loving but clear-sighted encomium, economically and wittily written, to a wonderful part of the world. --Alan Stewart

Reviews

Elisabeth Luard. Daily Mail. May 28th 1999.
"A wonderful book: funny, affectionate, no hint of patronage, a true portrait of place and people, reaching deep into the flesh and bones beneath the skin. Tuck it into your holiday luggage and dream"

The Observer (Travel) - 27th June 1999
"A delight".

Giles Milton. Daily Telegraph, May 15 1999.
"An exquisite account of his life as a rustic sheep-farmer. The book, Driving Over Lemons, is so darn good that he is already being talked of within the publishing industry as the new Peter Mayle"

Customer Reviews

A beautiful book that leaves you warm and happy
When one thinks of English in Spain, you automatically assume Frank Butcher types in tight Speedo trunks loitering drunk in Lineker's Bar and eating fry-ups all day.

Chris Stewart and his wife Ana are Ex-Pats, but with a difference. Rather than trying to make Spain English, they left these shore to adapt to the Spanish agricultural lifestyle, and enjoy the atmosphere on their new property in Las Alpajurras.

The book brings together a sentiment of blissful happiness, and you can almost smell the lemon blossom on the front cover.

I enjoyed this book as much as I did 'Mukiwa', by Peter Godwin, but without any of the poigniancy and heartache felt in Godwin's work.

A fantastic read, well worth 5 stars.

A hot Spanish holiday without the jetlag
I picked up this expecting a variation on the "Year in Provence" theme and found I was totally wrong. The Englishman abroad idea was still the basis of the book however, there the similarity ended. Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia is much more beievable and real. There is no feeling that the stories have been elaborated or embroidered. You sense a commitment to the simplicity of this way of life and that despite the popularity of the novel the family will not be "selling out" on this lifestyle. At the end I felt as though I had experienced the ups and downs of the first years with him. Whilst I came away knowing I would have hated it in many ways I still thoroughly enjoyed this book. Highly recommended and compulsive reading.

Shows life in rural Spain with love and humour
I ordered this book with one of your £5 vouchers that I had won in a competition. This was an excellent read and was full of humour and evoked a wonderful feeling of knowing all the locals personally. As someone who loves the Spanish way of life it only served to make me more determined to get to my goal and move there. Chris Stewart's desriptions of the area and the local people were not airey fairy but was full of love and humour and shows that it is possible for an English family to move into the "wilds" of Spain and fit in, rather than congregating along the coast and only mixing with the ex-pat community. I would recommend this book to anyone and have done! It really was an excellent read and I look forward to the next volume.