Martin Brolly


From an Italian point of view;   September 24, 2005
 17 out of 17 found this review helpful

Annie Hawes southern adventures bring back old memories and feelings that an Italian who has lived abroad for 10 years might have somehow forgotten.
Stereotypes and cliches of the Italian way of living and interacting are all so vivid and real in Hawes' account that while reading I sometimes forgot the reality around me and I could nearly touch the carachters and feel part of their dialogues.

Great read, great book.

Mirco Scaramucci


Annie hawes Does It Again   September 24, 2005
 7 out of 10 found this review helpful

Third Book in the series, "Journey to the south" has intrigued and inspired me.
I cannot wait to explore the Calabrian region of Italy after reading her information + humorous account of the family DeGilio's return to their native parish.

Martin Brolly


A disappointingly thin and slightly bitter vintage   September 2, 2005
 34 out of 41 found this review helpful

This is the third of Annie Hawes' Italian character stories, but alas, in my judgement it lacks for the most part the winning charm, the empathy, and the cheerful good humour of her first two books.

The earlier books drew on her experience, over 15 years or more, of finding her way in a wholly new, distinctive - and often bemusing - social and cultural milieu among the olive groves of Liguria. Her perceptions were fresh, acute and wide-ranging, her cast of characters extensive and sympathetically observed, her own role presented with endearing gentle self-mockery.

This book by contrast focuses almost entirely on a three-weeks' visit with her partner and members of his family to Calabria, from where the family emigrated many years before. It is necessarily much more of a concentrated travelogue. But Annie is no Jan Morris. Her handling of background history and geography tends to be plodding and heavy, while it seems fairly evident that she found Calabria rather primitive and vaguely threatening. The running jokes run a bit thin, the amazing-Mediterranean-food motif becomes distinctly fatigued, and the observation of local characters is rarely humorous - in fact it's sometimes a little cruel and unexpectedly crotchety. Having discarded much of her ingenue-in-Italy persona, I fear she hasn't yet found a more rationally serious or critical voice. Hints of political passion and human pathos are just that, undeveloped hints.

As with predecessors roughly in this genre, like Peter Mayle, Annie seems to have found that her "Englishwoman Abroad" material scarcely stretched to two books. For me at least there was a sensation of reading a mechanistic commercial sequel. The warm and spontaneous outflow of enthusiasm has gone. She and her publishers should perhaps consider whether she needs to change tack entirely.