» Update your details

• Extract
• Synopsis
• Reviews
• Product details

• Biography
• More titles by Annie Hawes

Synopsis

When Annie Hawes buys a hillside cottage in Italy for no more than the price of a dodgy second-hand car, a capable young Englishwoman becomes a surprisingly incapable Ligurian signorina …

In the overgrown garden of a small, stone house among the olive groves of Liguria, high above the Mediterranean, a curious combination of bonfire dinner and business meeting occurs. In the area by chance, Annie and her sister have no intention of moving to the Italian Riviera. Still, they eat the fragrant, rosemary skewered sausages, drink (perhaps a little too much of) the wine, and allow themselves to be taken on a moonlit tour of the ramshackle house and garden … and fall in love with it all.

Their new neighbours are baffled – how have these Foreign Females survived without learning to spot wild asparagus or tell good mushrooms from bad? Don’t they have any idea how to get a supply of olive oil from a couple of dozen olive trees, or good wine from bramble-choked vines? Fortunately the hardcore olive-farming folk of Diano San Pietro are on hand to ply them with huge meals, plenty of ridicule and all the old-fashioned know-how they’ll need to get by.

Reviews

Critic Review:

 “Annie Hawes is warm, funny,  idiosyncratic and a dedicated people watcher”- Observer

“Brilliantly evocative… warm and witty”- Daily Mail

 “Genuinely funny”- Express

Product details

Shipped within 24hrs.
FREE UK Delivery*

• Full delivery details

• » View your basket