The Perfect Beach Read
Aug. 6th, 2006 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselA Parrot in the Pepper Tree - Chris Stewart - Sort Of Books, 2002
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It is not, in general, a good idea to read about a destination while one is visiting it. The danger of invidious comparisons (in either direction) is too great. But while packing for a recent holiday in the Mediterranean I decided to break my rule and take this book along. It was the right decision. This is the perfect beach read.
For those who haven’t encountered his previous Driving over Lemons, Chris Stewart is an aging hippy who lives with his wife and daughter on a farm in Las Alpujarras, a mountainous region south of Granada in southern Spain. His chief claim to fame is to have been one of the founders of Genesis (a story he recounts here), but lacking much in the way of musical talent he was sacked long before it became famous. He subsequently provided the drum rolls for a travelling circus, travelled to Spain to learn flamenco guitar and became an expert sheep shearer. As this biography indicates, he is a bit of hopeless dreamer (I imagine he has had a few tense moments with his nearest and dearest from time to time) but, on the evidence of these stories at least, he has a self-deprecating wit and charm that make him impossible to dislike.
This book picks up from where Driving over Lemons left off and has more stories from the rather odd region of Spain that he inhabits (there seems to be an unusually high proportion of eccentric ex-pats from various parts of Europe as well as the usual roster of Spanish country types who seem remarkably unbothered by this foreign invasion), interspersed with tales of his previous careers. He describes how he set about writing the first book and his bemusement at its sudden success (it was read on Radio 4, which is where I first heard about it and was struck by the opening image of an estate agent telling him to drive over the lemons on the road because there were so many of them). Other on-going storylines include the threat to his farm from a dam and the building of an ecological solar-powered swimming pool, as well as the titular parrot. My personal favourite was the story about Juan and the lovers’ quarrel. There aren’t many other books where you will find an earnest discussion of the most suitable attire to wear in bed while waiting for someone who has threatened to come round and kill you.
Needless to say there is, as with all books about ex-pats living in Mediterranean countries, a certain implied smugness - “we’re living in the nearest place to Paradise on earth and you aren’t”. Some of the stories, based as they are in real life, tend to fizzle out from a dramatic point of view. But on a Mediterranean beach with one’s brains addled by the hot sun and one’s eyes dazzled by the intense blue of the sea, these minor cavils are forgotten. Whether this book would work quite as well if read in a different environment - say the depths of a cold, grey British winter - I can of course no longer say (it’s never the same reading something a second time). But I’ll happily lend it to anyone who wants to find out.
* * * * *
It is not, in general, a good idea to read about a destination while one is visiting it. The danger of invidious comparisons (in either direction) is too great. But while packing for a recent holiday in the Mediterranean I decided to break my rule and take this book along. It was the right decision. This is the perfect beach read.
For those who haven’t encountered his previous Driving over Lemons, Chris Stewart is an aging hippy who lives with his wife and daughter on a farm in Las Alpujarras, a mountainous region south of Granada in southern Spain. His chief claim to fame is to have been one of the founders of Genesis (a story he recounts here), but lacking much in the way of musical talent he was sacked long before it became famous. He subsequently provided the drum rolls for a travelling circus, travelled to Spain to learn flamenco guitar and became an expert sheep shearer. As this biography indicates, he is a bit of hopeless dreamer (I imagine he has had a few tense moments with his nearest and dearest from time to time) but, on the evidence of these stories at least, he has a self-deprecating wit and charm that make him impossible to dislike.
This book picks up from where Driving over Lemons left off and has more stories from the rather odd region of Spain that he inhabits (there seems to be an unusually high proportion of eccentric ex-pats from various parts of Europe as well as the usual roster of Spanish country types who seem remarkably unbothered by this foreign invasion), interspersed with tales of his previous careers. He describes how he set about writing the first book and his bemusement at its sudden success (it was read on Radio 4, which is where I first heard about it and was struck by the opening image of an estate agent telling him to drive over the lemons on the road because there were so many of them). Other on-going storylines include the threat to his farm from a dam and the building of an ecological solar-powered swimming pool, as well as the titular parrot. My personal favourite was the story about Juan and the lovers’ quarrel. There aren’t many other books where you will find an earnest discussion of the most suitable attire to wear in bed while waiting for someone who has threatened to come round and kill you.
Needless to say there is, as with all books about ex-pats living in Mediterranean countries, a certain implied smugness - “we’re living in the nearest place to Paradise on earth and you aren’t”. Some of the stories, based as they are in real life, tend to fizzle out from a dramatic point of view. But on a Mediterranean beach with one’s brains addled by the hot sun and one’s eyes dazzled by the intense blue of the sea, these minor cavils are forgotten. Whether this book would work quite as well if read in a different environment - say the depths of a cold, grey British winter - I can of course no longer say (it’s never the same reading something a second time). But I’ll happily lend it to anyone who wants to find out.