Product Description

Life is never simple for PR consultant Anna Nicholas as she attempts to cut loose her ties with London for a more manana existence in rural Mallorca with her family. Despite nearing her dream to open a cattery, she is thrown off course by the abduction of her beloved toad, a scorpion infestation, getting lost in the hills and a growing fixation with ancient goats. Meanwhile in London she's coping with loopy new clients - an amorous rock climber, a Bulgarian transvestite couturier and a couple of warring designers. Witty, pithy and brimming with memorable characters, "Goats From A Small Island" is Anna's third book about working between two places and a delightful tribute to Mallorca's rich and varied way of life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33706 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'beautifully written and highly entertaining' --The Mirror

'... has a tremendous gift for descriptive writing' --Nicholas Parsons

Review
Featured in Spain magazine, July 2009

Review
`Commuting PR consultant with more tales of her life in Mallorca à la A Lizard in My Luggage.'

Customer Reviews

A great addition to a wonderful series
Having quickly devoured the first two books on my last holiday I was delighted to find the third in the series waiting for me this summer. I am pleased to say this book exceeded my expectations! How lovely it was to be plunged back into Anna's welcoming world with descriptions so vivid you can almost smell the paella and characters so vibrant you'd swear you've met them! It really was the perfect holiday read: light, hysterically funny and extremely well written. The book works brilliantly as a sequel but equally a friend of mine borrowed it and seemed to enjoy it just as much without having read the previous installments. I hasten to add she has swiftly rushed out to complete her collection with the first two!

Anna's done it again!
Having pre-ordered I so badly wanted this book before Amazon's promised date of delivery. The reason? I was going to Soller for a few days and wanted to absorb it all in its own environment. Amazon didn't disappoint me and neither did Anna. The book arrived and was packed in the suitcase immediately. We arrived in our beloved Soller and it was such a privilege to read all about it whilst sitting in the town square. Anna and her family, along with the many friends they have made whilst living there, are all so real. To eat in those very cafes and restaurants, and be served by the book's characters in those very shops is a wild and crazy experience all brought to life by Anna's magnificent and sensitive story telling. As a reader you know so much about them but so little. I felt like shaking their hands and saying 'Hi I'm Karen, I've read about you in Anna's books!' This third book is just as good as the others if not more so, even more fun now I know the characters better. I am hoping Anna can manage a fourth volume. In the meantime I'll just have to read them all again!

Such a great read!
Anna Nicholas has done it again. Her third book in her sequence about living two lives, as a resident of sun-drenched Mallorca, and a PR mover and shaker in Mayfair and beyond, is as joyful, hilarious and as full of quirky insights as its predecessors.

Except, what makes this book a clever departure from the other two, is Anna's passionate foray in to archaelogy, focusing on Myotragus the miniature goat, who scampered over Mallorcan wastes in ancient times. Anna's respectful evocation of Dorothea Bates's discovery of the enigmatic creature is moving and entertaining in equal measure, and adds depth and contrast to Anna's own, and continuing voyage of discovery.

Whilst Myotragus is the wonderfully offbeat focus of the book, we can also delight along the way at the progress towards completion of Anna's hotel for cats, which, with the emphasis on creatures very much alive today (!), and mewing for bed and board and plenty of stroking whilst their owners are away on holiday, provides feline counterpoint to the archaelogical storyline.

But let's not forget the richly varied, at times hilarious, human menagerie which always makes reading Anna Nicholas such a treat. From sultry, sulky models who are refusing to do a swimming pool dive during a photoshoot for fear that their dyed blonde hair will turn green, to highly exacting cross-dressing clients, to her ever-smiling, long-suffering "Scotsman" who takes furtive refuge in smoking his beloved "puros", and an overweight Mallorcean postman who insists on taking up jogging alongside our heroine, this book is a constant source of entertainment, and a fund of delicious anecdotes.

But beneath all the surface humour and good fun, Anna can still movingly remind us of the eternities that came before, as Myotragus paced around the island chomping on the vegetation of his day; and the eternities in worlds beyond, as her son Ollie gazes at the stars in awe on a summer's night, through a battered astronomical telescope.