Extra Virgin: Amongst the Olive Groves of Liguria

Such a delightful book. I'm savoring every page. Unlike so many "foreigners living abroad" this one does not look down on the locals as if they were curiosities in a zoo. Rather the author and her sister view the locals as in the know, and they themselves are the curiosities. I enjoy that attitude and am loving the book.

This is a great book. Annie is a brilliant author/story teller. I loved her sense of humour which often had me laughing out loud. It is a story of her move to a small village in Italy and documents the characters she met, the experienced she had and the mistakes she made whilst adjusting to life in a new culture. I loved this book and would recommend this book and all her other books which I have also read (and re-read a few times too).

I so wanted to love this book! Fact is, only one person finished it in our book club. The dialogue...didn't seem to be any. No relationship with her sister. There is really no story. They go to a coffee shop. Spoiler alert, they built steps in their home. Will there be railings? We did all agree it was a great book to fall asleep if you have problems sleeping. The whole idea was great, just wasn't pulled off.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book! I am visiting Liguria next month.

Totally loved this book. Hearty, zesty made me hungry all the time for beautiful Italian food and landscapes. Wanted to meet all of those people and I thank Annie for taking me inside her wonderful adventure.

Enjoyable book.

Easy to read and easy to picture.

Love this book

When Annie Hawes and her sister, Lucy, are working temporarily in Liguria, they discover a dilapidated stone house with its own olive trees in the hills high above the Mediterranean. Lured by the sun, the food, the wine and the cast of friendly people they meet there, the two sisters find themselves managing to raise the funds to buy the old property (after all the price to buy the house outright is less than a couple of years' rent in London, where they are at present based) and before long the pair are spending a large part of their time working on the house and, to a certain extent, on the land. Okay, so there is no running water (but there is a well) and there is no proper lavatory (but there is an earth closet which has a wonderful views from its window), but for our two intrepid heroines this is not a problem when they have a house of their own, some olive trees and a whole host of helpful, if somewhat eccentric, neighbours to assist them with everything from how to slice (or not slice) a tomato, to how to harvest an olive tree and how to comport themselves as young, unmarried women living alone in Italy - and these neighbours are not backward in coming forward with plenty of 'helpful' advice. Of course, Annie and Lucy make many mistakes along the way - not least with the Ligurian dialect - but as time passes, and they realise that their behaviour must seem just as odd and comical to the locals as the local people's appear to them, the two women begin to feel much more at home. But with the need to return to London at intervals to earn some much-needed money, can their old Italian stone house ever be more than a lovely second home?Enjoyable, amusing and with some lovely descriptions of Liguria and its people, this book made for a very pleasant summertime read. It is true that when I first started reading I thought that Ms Hawes seemed to be playing for laughs at the expense of her Italian neighbours, but as I read on I could see it was all done with real affection and the author certainly made fun of her own naivety and inexperience when faced with living in a very different way to her life in London. I also have to say that I would have appreciated it if the author had provided a better idea of the timeline of her experiences because although this book was first published in 2001, I think her story must have started quite some time before then. All of that said, however, and as I mentioned earlier, this memoir made an amusing and very pleasant summertime read and I am interested in looking at the two other titles by Ms Hawes: ‘Ripe for the Picking’ and ‘Journey to the South’ in which she continues her Italian adventures.4 Stars.

I’m sorry to only give this 3 stars but I was expecting more. It’s a long book and more like a diary than a real story with a plot and characters you can get close to. Sadly I agree with some of the other reviews that it was a bit boring and I could only get through a chapter at a time. I enjoyed the follow up to this book more (which I had read first and hence bought this one). It’s a shame as the setting is lovely. It just needed some gusto!

When I had completed just the first book of this trilogy, it made me long for an Italian or a Mediterranean diet and deliciously hungry. Apart from this being autobiographical, and such an entertaining read I would highly recommend it to both male or female, especially a normally busy person while on holiday for perfect relaxation,

How do you convince two seemingly rational English girls to buy, what is essentially a delapidated mud hut halfway up a mountain? Apparently with little problem if you throw in a few olive trees and a view to die for. Little inconveniences such as an earth toilet and having to carry your water from a well some distance away did not discourage our would be Ligurians. There is a lot of positive things in this book, the local inhabitants are skilfully sketched and you soon know the goodies and the baddies (and there's always at least one baddy!). It says a lot for the girls sheer determination that they buckled down and made their Italian hideaway into a personal paradise. It would have been useful to have some form of time reference as the story unfolded, there did seem to be some jumping about but it never really detracted from the overall enjoyment. Might sound a strange thing to say but this book had an awful lot of words in it. A sense of not wasting anything, including space, being a carry over perhaps from the way in which life was lived in this close knit community. Well worth a read but allow plenty of time.

If you are expecting sun, sea and sex stories, this is not the book for you. It is a book that wonderfully describes the countryside and the people of Liguria, and if these descriptions are repeated over and over again, they only serve to help you understand the rural communities in this part of Italy, and the people, whose characters have been shaped by war and hardship and a conflict between the Catholic Church and the Communist Party. Annie Hawes has shown how the village has been dragged towards the 21st century, but how she herself was content to let go of urban British life. I loved it, and felt I knew every village, every villager and every olive tree!