|
| The Olive Season: Amour, a New Life and Olives Too | 
 enlarge | Author: Carol Drinkwater
Publisher: Abacus
Category: Book
List Price: £7.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £7.98 (100%)
New (6) Collectible (4) from £0.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 262956
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0349115494
Dewey Decimal Number: 910
EAN: 9780349115498
ASIN: 0349115494
Publication Date: March 6, 2003
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Paperback. Usual light spine creasing. Clean and tight, covers lightly rubbed and bumped. A nice copy, clean and tight with very light wear. Daily despatch by Royal Mail.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Like a curate's egg!! June 26, 2007
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Living in Southwest France myself? I enjoy reading books that cover the real life stories of those who live here in France. Carol Drinkwater's The Olive season is one such book that I have recently read.We have a saying back where I come from that describes something that is partly good and partly bad!!...We call it like the "curate's egg"! such is Ms Drinkwater's The Olive Season.The good part is her ability to paint a wonderful vision in the readers mind of what the Provencal life is like for those who live there.She also writes of the darker side of the cote d'Azur. The bad part is that there are large tracks of the book where there appears no story line and just a muddle of words that leaves you wondering if it was added to pack out the chapter.The most irratating part in her book is her apparent inability to do anything without the help of the trusted Arab labourer Quashia and the Olive guru Rene.In my mind without them the book wouldn't exist! I think readers will need to form their own opinons but for my money the book is littered with to much self pity and self doubt (Ms Drinkwater had a miscarriage)that I found myself going from sympathy to irritation in a space of a few pages! If you enjoy a easy read and can tolerate Ms Drinkwater's dizzy scribblings then buy the book.
 The Olive Harvest June 7, 2005
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is the first Carol Drinkwater book that I have read, and I was not disappointed. The book made me laugh, cry, and then laugh again, but most of all, it made me want to live on an olive farm in France.
 Continuing the magic May 6, 2005
In this book we continue with the magical story of how Carol and Michel have made their home in France and of the friends they have made there. As in her first book, Carol is funny, sad and perceptive, and she makes the listener feel as if they are hearing the story from their best friend.After you have listened to this audiobook you cannot fail to want to listen to the next one straight away. I listened to the CDs in my car and didn't want the journeys to end!
Enjoyable but Disappointing October 20, 2003
3 out of 12 found this review helpful
No need to have read 'The Olive Farm' first to appreciate this book - it stands alone just fine. Easygoing, enjoyable read with some descriptions of mouthwatering meals that Carol throws together always accompanied by several glasses of wine that will make you yearn for a 'simple' life in the sun. However, the big disappointment for me was Carol's assumption that using water diviners is somehow part of the rustic mediterranean charm and was a quite amazing spectacle and a novelty. Yes, it is amazing, but Carol gave the impression that she had no idea that many homes in the English West Country and Wales and huge numbers of us here in Scotland, rely on water diviners, well & borehole diggers for every drop. I live only 35 minutes drive from a Marks & Spencer, Next,John Lewis etc., and have just had our old well replaced with a 45 metre deep borehole. Her disbelieving, slightly amused description of water divining in Cannes I found rather irritating as it is just a fact of life in the UK.
The Search for Elysium October 7, 2003
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is an extraordinary and fascinating follow-up to The Olive Farm.The reader is drawn deeply and inexorably in to the world of the author, confronted with her personal struggles and entranced by her pastiche of growth and decay in the world of nature, a metaphor for her life. Passages of great lyrical beauty are punctuated by memories of sadness and wrenching trauma. Carol Drinkwater has managed to take the story of the farm and weave into it a stunningly honest and brave treatment of the background to her search for life and love.Yet, the profound message one comes away with is of expectation, hope and a peace that is hard won, like the fruiting olive trees there are good seasons and not so good but there is always the wonder of what the next one will bring. This was her search for Elysium.
I look forward to what the next book will bring.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
