Not the greatest book on earth, and a bit slow at times,but interesting nevertheless. I'm just not really sure what the point was. " — Dee, 12/7/2013 Chris Stewart, formerly of Genesis, relocates his family to Andalucia. They embrace a very peasant lifestyle, and seem to love it. DRIVING OVER LEMONS has sold well though — in six months we’ve sold 200,000 in the UK. So far, the fanatical public response has been limited to a very agreeable family from Córdoba who walked all the way up the river one summer evening to get their book signed, and an extremely pretty Swiss woman who bought me a beer in a bar in return for signing her three books. I can learn to live with this sort of pressure. A: A pig-killing is certainly gruesome and the orgy of meat eating that follows it makes you good and bilious. It’s not an occasion I would choose to attend, but it is an obligation to help your neighbor out — the thing needs a lot of labor to manage the muscular and heavy pig and then to see to its spectacular metamorphosis into myriad sausages. Of course, our first matanzas made us feel very much a part of life here and we did enjoy that aspect.

If you marry that man," which seemed highly likely as it was our wedding day, "you will never be bored." Manuel hizo lo que le pedían, entregándole una a su padre y sentándose luego a su lado con la otra. Las afinaron un poco, tocaron distraídamente unos acordes,y pasaron a trancas y barrancas a una tonada popular alpujarreña. We were unmistakably different, though. One day she took us to task over this. “Why can’t you be like everybody else?” she asked. “Well, we do what we can…” we replied. The magic of Spain is there in the language, with its copious admixture of Arabic, which for 800 years was spoken by everybody in the peninsula. It’s in the fruit and the trees – the pomegranate from Persia, the oranges from China, and almonds, saffron and aubergines.Ay, Spain and your Spaniards… you’ve been through hard times before, but you’ve come through right side up in the end. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed and hope that the forces of reaction and stagnation – the Church and the fascism even now creeping out of the woodwork – will be confronted and subjugated, before things reach the pretty pass they got to last time. So, Stewart, I do thank you for the one spark of inspiration in the whole of the book. However, even with that, I just can't lay my recommendation to it. Christopher 'Chris' Stewart (born 1951), was the original drummer and a founding member of Genesis. He is now a farmer and an author. A classmate of Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel at Charterhouse School, Stewart joined them in a school band called The Garden Wall, and they later formed another band with schoolmates Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips, called Anon. This band eventually became Genesis in January 1967. Stewart appears on the band's first two singles, "The Silent Sun"/"That's Me" and "A Winter's Tale"/"One-Eyed Hound." Although several demos from Stewart's time with Genesis appear on the Genesis Archive 1967-75 box set, he is not credited with playing on any of them. (Peter Gabriel seems to have played drums on a couple, and the rest do not feature drums.) The drama will follow hapless optimist, Chris and his pragmatic wife Ana, as they uprooting from the UK to Andalusia, in an attempt to build a new life in the Alpujarra mountains. As idyllic as their remote, picturesque farmhouse El Valero might look, no running water is just the start of the challenges the couple will face, but no matter how tough things get, they never have to look far for oddball expats and friendly locals willing to lend a hand and offer advice.

Shepherds were suspicious of the mechanical machine at first, but now, ten years later, there’s not a shepherd here who shears by hand. That may not be entirely a good thing — but it’s a true thing. The problem is that I just don't care. Stewart, whether he meant to or not, kept me at arms length. I felt no suspense nor any struggle. All of the characters, especially his wife, were more supporting cast than ever having real personalities of their own (except maybe Romero). At times he hinted at disappointment or challenges but I never felt it. Everything that was hard seemed easy - something which moving to a falling down farm in the middle of rural Andalucia should never seem. Far below, beside the river, I caught sight of a little farm in a horseshoe-shaped valley, a derelict house on a cactus-covered crag, surrounded by unkempt fields and terraces of ancient olive trees.I shared the circus experience with my then Swedish girlfriend, Kjerstin (pronounced ‘chest-in’ more or less). Shortly afterwards Kjerstin met a much more reliable and suitable sort of bloke, a Swede, and very sensibly gave me the boot. I was devastated and resolved to go and work on a kibbutz in Israel to repair my wounded heart. At the last minute I saw in the local paper an advertisement seeking an under assistant pigman on a farm in Bramley, near Guildford. Now Guildford was a lot nearer and a lot less politically problematical than Israel, so I went along and, being the only applicant, secured the job.

But I was pleasantly surprised by the book; indeed, by the end I was thoroughly charmed. Stewart does not idealize the inhabitants Andalucia; for him, they are individuals, not bearers of ancient tradition. He enjoys farming and herding, but he knows it can be rough, tedious, and thankless work. Certainly he plays the role of the inept foreigner—this is inevitable if you’re moving someplace new—but he does not dwell on this overmuch. For somebody who began writing fairly late in life, he is a tasteful and skillful author. He is capable of rich prose, he has a good ear for dialogue, and best of all he does not stretch any subject beyond interest. Take half a cup of Bill Bryson, mix with three tablespoons of Peter Mayle, then add just a pinch of Monty Python, and what you get is Driving Over Lemons.”-Chicago Tribune With the money you've got to spend you could afford that place and have some left over to do it up.'A lovely, gentle book. Brilliant tales of a life a world away from Birmingham. Looking forward to reading the next two.

After a full minute, I decided to wait. I waited to see what happens after Ana arrived. Maybe she would be a mitigatjng force. She was. I waited to see when the previous farmer finished teaching Chris the Andalucia farming practices and introducing him to other Spanish farmers. I am glad I waited. Also other English transplants showed up in the narrative. And other European/outsiders also showed up, all teaching and learning together. Took me a while to get into this book, but it was a nice taste of adventure in Spain. Everyday tasks transformed into adventures in a foreign place. I had recently learnt a piece by Gaspar Sanz, the “Dance of the Washerwomen”, and there was a part of me that wondered if they might not stop what they were doing and dance, if I were to play that piece. Fortunately, I did not put this half-witted notion to the test.It's unavoidable making the comparison between this book and Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. Both are memoirs by ex-Pat Brits of their relocation to bucolic parts of Southern Europe, both to be found in my neighborhood book store almost side-by-side under Travel Essays. A blurb from the Daily Telegraph even says Stewart is being talked up as "the new Peter Mayle." Fortunately Stewart compared well--in fact I liked his book quite a bit more than Mayle's. After travelling and working throughout Europe, Stewart settled and bought a farm named El Valero in the Alpujarras region of Andalucia, where he lives and works with his wife Ana Exton and daughter Chloë. He ran for the position of local councillor in the 27 May 2007 local elections in Órgiva representing the Green Party, [2] where he received 201 votes (roughly 8 per cent). If only we lived in Spain!" we each said to the other. So we came to Spain one April to see if we really did want to live in it — and we did, and after eleven years, we still don’t regret it, not one bit. On the other hand, I have heard that people have been seen in Orgiva clutching the book. This is wonderful. If the book succeeds in giving a shot in the arm to the rural tourism in an otherwise depressed area, then that’s just great!