Driving Over Lemons

This book had been hanging about on my shelves ever since I watched Richard E Grant talk to Chris on the BBC4 show ‘Write Around the World’.

This is a bit of a new experience for me as I don’t read memoirs or travel writing, but working in a bookshop makes you expand your reading material.

From the start Chris makes it feel as though he is talking to you personally with a really warm and humorous writing style that makes the book so intimate and his passion for what he is doing comes across so clearly.

Chis takes us through all his ups and downs in setting up home in Las Alpujarras, a remote region in the south of Granada, introducing us to the ragtag band of his neighbours from gruff natives to eccentric ex-pats.

I loved the humour throughout the book, making even the most frightening and disastrous of events another episode to be overcome with a certain lightness of heart and this seemed to have made him lots of friends amongst the people he becomes involved with.

One of my favourite chapters (I lived in North Yorkshire for 20ish years) is when he decides to bypass all traditions and attempts to go to market with sheep and sell them without an agent.

I got the anniversary edition with the extra chapter 25 Years Later, loved how things had changed but stayed the same.

A cracking read full of warmth and dry humour, one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read.