Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted [Hardcover]

Annie Hawes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2001

Extra Virgin introduces a major new voice in this delicious tale of two sisters who find unexpected joy in the isolated village of Diano San Pietro, Italy.

How could anyone leave such a lovely place to go to rack and ruin? It looks as if no one has ever been near it for decades, its land's untended and its olive tress unkept.  I want it every badly.  It ought to be mine.

In 1983 a pale Annie Hawes and her equally pale sister decide to leave England for the sun-drenched olive groves of a small Italian town in Liguria.  With fantasies of handsome tanned men and swimming in the sea urging them on, they sign up to graft roses-something they know nothing about, but as it is a bad year for olives, they figure they can fake a knowledge of roses for ten weeks.  What they don't count on is falling in love with Italy-and with one old farmhouse in particular.

Although they quickly realize that Liguria is not Tuscany -- it is undiscovered by tourists, and its inhabitants (none of whom appear to be handsome, and none of whom seem to be under forty) have strict ideas about what young Englishwomen should and shouldn't be doing("to go swimming in seawater outside the month of July or August is even worse for your health than drinking cappuccino after twelve noon!") they simply cannot resist the charm exuded by the little town.  Annie, who has never wanted to settle down anywhere, now doesn't want to leave.  How will she find a way to make this old derelict farmhouse her own? What will the Ligurians think about their wild new neighbor with her strange ways staying on for good?

Extra Virgin is a wonderful memoir, written with irresistible verve and humor.  Annie Hawe's adventures will captivate readers who have wondered what happens when you fall in love with a certain house, on a certain hill, near a certain village. After eighteen years living as a Ligurian, Annie tells a story that is much more realistic than nay other book on Italy, and Extra Virgin is sure to put Liguria in the minds of travelers, armchair and real alike.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fed up with cold, foggy London and the high cost of real estate, Annie Hawes is persuaded by her sister Lucy to travel to Italy and graft roses for the winter. The sisters arrive in rural Liguria with some formal Italian, no knowledge of rose grafting, and visions of Mediterranean men and sun. What they find is a town full of hard-working, wary olive growers smack in the middle of an olive oil depression who think these two young Englishwomen are nuts. Extra Virgin tells the story of the sisters' acclimation--theirs to Liguria and Liguria to them--and how they fell in love with a crumbling farmhouse in the hills.

Annie quickly finds that though they are only two miles from the Italian Riviera, it might as well be a hundred. Liguria is an old town full of time-honored peculiarities, especially in regard to espresso consumption (never, ever, after lunch; it will close your stomach) and swimming before summertime officially starts. "Seawater at the wrong time of year is even worse for your health than coffee at the wrong time of day, and the beach is only deserted because, as far as the citizens are concerned, if you put so much as a toe into the water before June you are certain to die within the week from exposure or pneumonia or both," says Hawes. Eventually, the sisters are accepted by the townsfolk, though they find the idea of the women buying the farmhouse and running it themselves (there are 50 olive trees on the land) fantastical.

Extra Virgin draws you in to the heart of Liguria and its inhabitants. Hawes has a knack for drawing characters and especially for describing the luscious meals that they are served--and eventually learn to cook. "Lucy and I are kindly allowed to make the tomato-and-basil salad," Hawes says, "and do our best not to be offended by being complemented on how like a proper tomato-and-basil salad it is." Pour yourself an espresso (as long as it's before lunch) or a grappa (aids the digestion), and then sit down to enjoy Extra Virgin. --Dana Van Nest

From Publishers Weekly

Like many European travel memoirs, Hawes's work hinges on making the locals appear charming and eccentric, making the food seem sacred and making the countryside's beauty look dazzling yet unappreciated by those who live there. But unlike other journals, Hawes's focuses on an area as yet untouched by the masses of travel writers. The Italian Riviera is not quite Tuscany or Provence, but Hawes's book could contribute to the area's eventual popularity as a tourist destination. She describes the place with wonder, illumination and wit. Seventeen years ago, she and her sister Lucy left drafty England to take jobs as rose grafters (something they knew nothing about) in Diano San Pietro, a village in Liguria, on the Italian coast. What began as a 10-week jaunt became a permanent move to a vibrant, rich lifestyle revolving around food and the land. While she never covers the rose-grafting job in depth, Hawes does give a full account of how the pale-skinned, decidedly un-Italian sisters carved their niche among olive farmers and card-playing locals. Cuisine is a major part of the tale, and Hawes integrates it into her writing as a key cultural and social aspect of Ligurian life. The sisters are constantly chided for such grave sins as eating their salad before the main course and drinking two cups of morning espresso. Stalwart and open-minded, they take Italian criticisms of their bizarre British ways with a grain of salt. This blithe account will have gastronomes and travelers drooling. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (January 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060198508
• ISBN-13: 978-0060198503
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,283,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars italian adventures -- and not a la frances mayes, January 16, 2001

By 

"gothamannie" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted (Hardcover)

Annie Hayes' view of Italy is far from the dappled, sensuous quality that has defined that "other" book about newcomers (and subsequent converts) to the beauty of Italy. Mayes' books excel in recalling the fabulous foods, landscapes, neighbors and gossamer days of Tuscany. Extra Virgin does that, too, but here's the difference -- Hayes' book goes deeper. She and her sister make mistakes. A lot of them. They don't instantly assimilate. The farmlands of Liguria are a far cry from the rolling and tourist-friendly hills of Tuscany, and the townsfolk, puzzled by these seemingly naive English girls, give them hard-knock lessons on the road to becoming honorary Italians. Whereas the Mayes series focus on the earthly pleasures of Italy, Extra Virgin is about character -- from the social protocol amid the local gentry at the village coffee shop to the laughs the sisters endure when they take another helping of antipasti or primi (shame on them!) Here is an outsider's honest, non-academic attempt to dissect the prejudices between Northern & Southern Italians -- to probe their grudges and prejudices -- and maybe even bend the rules a little (never too much!) Yet the reader never gets the sense that the Italians aren't warm to the author -- on the contrary, despite the occasional playful ridicule they are portrayed as kind, generous, resourceful, rugged, and hardworking. Hayes conveys the idea that Italy and Italian culture can be as foreign and oftentimes preposterous as our own culture appears to us. I'm half Italian and found this book very valuable in showing me the character of my forefathers (and my Italian-American mother!) It also serves as a terrific and necessary guidebook cloaked in a travelogue -- it has the fantasy aspect of moving to Italy, but it's done with a heaping dose of reality. I would recommend Extra Virgin to anyone intending to visit Italy -- to grasp what it means to be fully immersed in things Italian. Haye's recipe? Go with a healthy dose of respect, a lot of humor and keep on hand the odd dash of scepticism wherever necessary. That's Italian!

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real-life look at living abroad, September 7, 2001

By 

Ivy (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted (Hardcover)

Don't let the soppy title fool you - Extra Virgin is an excellent memoir of the author's life in small-town Italy. Annie Hawes has created a down-to-earth (and back-to-the-earth) book that, in addition to an excellent description of life in Liguria, gives a close up look at topics we can all relate to: learning to maintain and improve that first house, fitting in to a new place, adjusting to new customs.

Probably the main strength of the book, though, is Hawes' portrait of her adopted home town and its changes through the years. She has lived at least half the year in Diano San Pietro for 20 years; she's become at least as Ligurian as English, while her town has become more modern and continental - but only a bit. Reading about Hawes' transformation, I learned along with her - about the excellent reasons behind some of the strange peasant beliefs, about the culture and society of rural Northern Italy, and about the everyday life of a small Italian town.

In the background are other stories, equally involving: the small gossips, scandals, and events of 20 years in one place. One of Hawes' virtues is to make her neighbors and friends seem real, with real-person traits and flaws, rather than merely colorful characters, especially as time progresses within the book.

The book itself is a pleasant, fun read. Hawes writes with a lot of gentle and mostly self-directed humor, and her style is breezy and light. It's easy to identify with her, also, both because of the style and because of the life she describes; I felt less a spectator and more a sympathizer in her struggles and delights.

All in all, Extra Virgin is one of the most enjoyable and knowledgeable living-in-Italy books I've read to date, and it lacks the self-conscious, overblown prose stylings that have rendered some similar books less engaging. I would recommend this to anyone who loves Italy or travel; it's a book worth reading and owning.

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't Let the Title Fool You, May 26, 2001

By 

Bill Marsano (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted (Hardcover)

Readers might miss this book solely because of its silly title. "Extra Virgin" has really nothing to do with the story except that olive oil is made in the region. And that ridiculous subtitle--"A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted"--suggests the kind of soft-centered, caramel-dipped, high-fructose prose found in Harlequin Romances...

This is not a gooey romance written by a birdbrain but a consistently engaging tale of a young Brit and her sister who take seasonal work harvesting olives in a little-known peasant village in a lesser-known region of Italy--and end up buying a houdse there.

The opening drags a bit. The author struggles with her pose as the bright young thing taking the traditional Brit's view of benighted foreign peasantry. Too pert by half, frankly. But what makes this book work is that the author observes closely, learns, and grows--grows up, too.

She began by thinking of her neighbors as jolly but backward folk who just love to feed people--and keep on feeding them. So typically Italian! Well, she gets over this; she begins to understand that these people actually know a thing or two and even know things she doesn't. As a result her prose calms down and her story moves along pretty briskly. There's humor and passion as she and her neighbors come to terms with each other--and as she increasingly becomes not merely a summer visitor but a person who comes to have some standing as a genuine member of her community.

The change occurs gradually through innumerable small steps (steps too small to mean much if taken out of context in a review) and one large event that can't be discussed because it would give away far too much. Look at it this way: We've had the sugary stuff of "Enchanted April" and the cold and cynical exploitation of "A Year in Provence." Annie Hawes's story is different; it might even be what would happen to you or me.