This was the first new life book I ever read. My mother-in-law sent it me in our first year in Spain. It rang so true. So many similar crazy events had happened to me. I so agreed, understood and commiserated with Chris Stewart, and perhaps more so with his wife Ana.

The new language barrier brings a complete feeling of helplessness and drowning combined with a fight for survival. Depths of despair and joys of discovery bring an everlasting wonder to his writings.

It’s a good read, written from the heart, and his best so far. It was the beginning, the raw newness and hardship of an alien way of life that is told so well. It has to be lived through and left behind to be able to write as he did about those pioneering days, far from normality and at times rationality.

I loved the character he bought his farm from and Chris really brings to life the absurdity of the whole situation. He’s out of his depth, yet loving it. It’s an unreal situation, that became a reality when the seller just sort of stays on in the house with Chris and his wife.

Chris just gets on with it, making the best of the situation, enjoying it secretly, while Ana is of course beginning to wonder if he’ll ever leave and wants Chris to evict him.
Fortunately for Chris, as I’m not convinced he’d have told him to go, the day comes when he walks off the farm for good.

It’s a great read and a good tale and I was really pleased to see in my local bookshop that after being translated into many different languages, it has finally been released in Spanish.

Being the first in the trilogy it is the best, the second is also a great tale about their new life, and the third goes off on a tangent with Chris and his travels. Saying that if there is a fourth one, I’ll be there to see what he’s up to next.

This book was chosen as a book of the month.

Drop by the forum and let us know if you'd be interested in a book read-in, we can choose a book between us all, just jot down your choices.