Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted

by Annie Hawes

Release Date: 09 January, 2001

Edition: Hardcover

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Different from the rest

This is NOT your typical story about foreigners buying a house and restoring it. Unlike Frances Mayes, who seems to only visit during the summer, these two plucky girls actually live in the rustico all year round, living like a peasant and learning their ways. It almost seems like an anthropological survey.

Hawe's writing is witty and sharp, and spares nothing in the minutiae of their daily life. This is a refreshing change from the typical fare from the genre where everything is bathed in some orange glow, everything is perfect, ripe and bursting with life. Hawes will have none of this shilly-shally, and throws in broken marriages, drugs, Aids and even death, amongst the endless feasting, olive oil, sunshine and beaches. Hawes also writes with surprisingly little emotion, letting little of her own feelings into the book, (unlike the rollercoaster account of Carol Drinkwater in the Olive Farm)
However, some little things, like her excessive use of Capital Letters, and sarcasm gets under your skin.

On the whole, a real-life, satisfying and wholesome read, just like the peasants in the book.

Another engaging expatriate memoir

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!