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 enlarge | Author: Chris Stewart
Publisher: Sort Of Books
Category: Book
List Price: £6.99
Buy Used: £0.01
You Save: £6.98 (100%)
New (41) Used (40) from £0.01
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 5308
Media: Paperback
Edition: New title
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0954899504
EAN: 9780954899509
ASIN: 0954899504
Publication Date: June 1, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: USED BOOK, NORMAL SHELF / READING WEAR TO COVER, SUPER FAST DELIVERY, DISPATCHED WITHIN 24 HOURS FROM UK!!!
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| Customer Reviews:
Endangered Canary November 1, 2006
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
Readers of Chris Stewart's earlier titles can rightly expect to be rewarded in his latest volume with another charming, playfully self-deprecating account of everything he turns his hand to, and an empathetic appreciation of the people he runs into.
Once again, we are treated to a delightful but informative romp through matters that most of us know nothing about - from dung beetles, frogs, dogs, trees, sheep (and their droppings), to olives, Costa wine and the eponymous almond blossom. All this set in the now familiar landscape around El Valero, the family cortijo in the Alpujarras in Southern Spain, at the junction of the rivers Trevelez and Cadiar,
As before we can count on his wife, Ana, and daughter Chloe - now a teenager, to provide quizzical counterpoint to some of his escapades, and on a charming coterie of local characters who accompany him on them.
But times change, and global issues reach even Alpujarrenan backwaters. Semi-starved illegal immigrants from Morocco ghost past his door, and Stewart feeds them, tries to simulate their furtive trek up from the coast. He works as a volunteer in an Immigrant Help centre in Granada. A seed-gathering expedition to Morocco years before is lovingly related, but hopes of helping his Berber helpers to escape their poverty trap ultimately came to nothing.
Climate change arrives with a vengeance. Life in the Alpujarras - always precarious and ever subject to extreme highs and lows, both physical and emotional - suffers unprecedented cold and severe drought. Crops are ruined, trees freeze and sheep risk starvation. A smallholding couple invests a huge amount of money to build a 600,000 litre concrete water tank to protect their irrigation water supply and with it their chosen lifestyle - albeit one of "ferocious" hard work. It makes no economic sense.
But Stewart explains "we need to go on taking some active part in our landscape, ploughing its soil, planting its orchards, tending its trees. That is how we keep a sense of who we are."
A sense that may be doomed. The Alpujarrenan life-style is irremediably uneconomic and as vulnerable as canaries in a coal mine before the onslaught of climate change. Between the lines there is the distinct possibility that the almond blossom will not be there to appreciate much longer, and that Chris will have to redefine his sense of "who we are".
Does that make his books also an endangered species? Given Stewart's irrepressible enthusiasm and willingness to `have a go' -almost certainly not. But don't be surprised to find him doing his bit to save the planet and, with customary bonhomie, giving his take on the issues that concern us all. Swan song for the Alpujarras, maybe, but if this canary falls off its perch we all really are down the shaft.
More of the same (and that's good!!) September 24, 2006
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
Having read "Driving Over Lemons" and "A Parrot In The Pepper Tree" previously, I re-read both before reading "Almond Blossom" to get back into Chris's story, and this book carries on nicely from the previous 2. I can see where the criticism regarding stories from the past filling a good part of the book comes from and I think these people do have a point, but if you're a fan of Chris's story you'll probably like it. Having read number 3 I'll be buying number 4 if / when it arrives. Enough said...
 Not a gripping or very entertaining storyline.... September 14, 2006
9 out of 16 found this review helpful
This book is a quick easy read but contains nothing exciting. Its really just a collection of really ordinary stuff that the author got up to whilst living in Spain.
I also got the impression that the author had searched a theasurus in an attempt to include interesting alternatives to commonly used words, maybe to try and make the transcript more interesting or intellectual. I wouldnt read other books by this author as the story was just so boring.
 Interesting and full of loveliness September 4, 2006
11 out of 14 found this review helpful
While not attempting to be a literary classic, this book is really well-written, accessible and imaginative. I've read the two previous Chris Stewart book, but this is my favourite. It is wonderfully well-balanced, combining humour with hardship, loveliness with earthy realism, and thoughtfulness with silliness. Chris paints an idylic picture of life in Spain, but includes interesting points of culture and copes with the struggles of that way of life with tenacious and joyous spirit.
 Flogging the Horse - Good Description September 4, 2006
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed the two previous books in this series and was quite looking forward to reading this. Often follow ups of this type are disappointing but I had high hopes as I didn't find Parrott in the Pepper Tree much inferior to Driving over Lemons.
As a result this was a real disappointment. Rambling and only very occasionally entertaining I really struggled to get through it. If you haven't bought the others do so and avoid this one.
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