Spanish Lessons - Softcover

LAMBERT, DEREK.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0091879248 ISBN 13: 9780091879242

Publisher: Ebury Press, 2001

Synopsis

After a long career as a jet-setting journalist, Derek Lambert decided to settle with his family in a white "casita", on Spain's Mediterranean Costa Blanca. Lambert introduces us to the "real" Spain - a nation of passionate and often contradictory people - as he adapts to his new found home.

About this title

Review

Anyone yearning for a house in the country--another country--will be reassured it can be done with Derek Lambert's engaging tale of his new life in Spain. Reassured, yet likely unconvinced that a rundown property with no running water, access or much of a roof is anybody's idea of a holiday home. That's just the point of Lambert's book: his goal was a life, not a get-away. "In the fading light, the house looked more apologetic than prepossessing. And yet it beckoned as though it contained small mysteries that might one day become familiar to us", he says as he scrambles over a stone fence to peer into the window of the house in a remote region of Andalusia. Indeed, the mysteries of plumbing, builders and a river with no bridge--and how one pays for such things--unfold slowly and then pick up speed and character as the story progresses.

This book has more of a sense of plot than many of this genre, leading to the decision whether to stay or leave, one familiar to anyone who has decided to live abroad. Lambert does not have the writing style that Frances Mayes brings to Under the Tuscan Sun nor the consistent humour of his Andalusia neighbour Chris Stewart in Driving over Lemons. However, he offers an important sense that he and his family are willing parties to the plot he weaves. That combined with Spanish lessons on the building trades and the ability to shear sheep makes Lambert's book a pleasant guide for setting up not just a house, but a home, in rural Spain. --Kathleen Buckley

Review

"An entertaining read in the vein of Mayle or Bryson... truly gripping" (The Times)

"A great insight into his first year on the Costa Blanca and the traumas that crop up" (The Mirror)

"The comic, anecdotal style of Peter Mayle with the shrewd observation of Bill Bryson...just the thing to take on holiday" (The Lady)

"Delightful" (Mail on Sunday)

"At last a cracking good book by a foreigner who went native in Spain! There are a million homes owned by foreigners in Spain and Spanish Lessons should be in every one" (Lookout)

Edition details

• Publisher: Ebury Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0091879248
• ISBN 13: 9780091879242
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272