Perhaps this book is a little generic but since it’s in a genre I’ve never read I enjoyed it. It’s an account of the author’s first year in the Italian province of Liguria. She goes out there from England with her sister in order to work for a while and ends up buying a tumbledown cottage in a hillside olive grove and staying where no decent Italian would dream of living at the time. The book’s honest about the fact that it’s not all happening in one year; mostly it’s the first year they are there but events and visits from different years are brought in to liven up the story and trips back to England to stock up on cash are elided too, but that’s not a problem. The extra dimension of the passage of time means that you get to see how rural Italy has changed over the past twenty years or so as well as getting a good story.

I thought it was charming and fun, but not the kind of thing I’d want to read all the time though.