Annie Hawes' Extra Virgin captivated the British bestseller lists for five months. There she describes with her witty humour her experiences of buying an old house in the olive groves of Italian Liguria with her sister and getting used to the customs of the little village.
Now it's been ten years since their coming, and Annie has settled down in her isolated house, surrounded by olive threes and neighbours with very many opinions about everything. Her sister has temporarily moved to Bulgaria to tech English and Anne is alone. Well, not quite alone for the friend of long time, Ciccio, a local chef and a son of a local family, has proven to be much more than a friend and is now practically living with her. Though this has to be kept as a secret because of the more and less old fashioned neighbours and Ciccio's loud and bustling family who grove olives, wine, vegetable and chicken and who consider it to their matter to be in charge of every member's life.
Well, as secrets tend to spread, soon Annie finds herself in the middle of Ciccio's family's responsibilities of dinners, harvesting and helping family in everything no matter what your own interests might be. But instead of approaching this as an uptight English person, tied to her own thoughts and routines, her flexible and humble attitude wins the hearts of the parent's in law and more as an amused onlooker she views and follows the ancient customs of farming and family life.
But the Italian family life isn't her only problem as the roof of the old house seems to be in the danger. The unknown and unnamed bug is eating the logs from inside and most of the estimations about the future of the house end up in the collation of the roof in the first autumn storm. It doesn't help that each member of the village seems to have different opinion on how she should act. Well, finally everything gets sorted out, but only after a long Italian confusion of trust, bias, misunderstandings.
Ripe for picking is one of the most entertaining books I've red for a long time. It is full of sparkling wit, clever observation of different culture and excellent language. Hawes has made an unusual but very well functioning decision of reducing dialogue so that it's inserted into the actual storytelling. This makes the narration very readable and adds extra humour into the story. And the use of Italian words in the text adds feeling to the story; it makes the cultural feeling stronger, such as the use of La Mama instead of mother. It communicates very strongly the matriarchal position the mother has in the Italian family, as well as the love and affection the offspring feel for her.
Annie Hawes' Ripe for picking is an excellent book and definitely worth of reading. And you should also be equipped with a good cookery book of Italian food because the description of the delicious food and preparation of it awakes an irresistible need for pasta, fresh rucola pesto and tomatoes, and many many other dishes.
