Sonderbooks Book Review of Spanish Lessons

Reviewed October 15, 2002.
Broadway Books, New York, 2002. 258 pages.
Available at Sembach Library. (946 LAM)

This is another of those delightful books about an English-speaker moving to a warm sunny Southern European climate. I always enjoy these books. Is it especially because I live in a foreign country myself? Such situations make you think about the cultural ideas that affect your outlook on life, and how those aren’t the same in other parts of the world.

Spanish Lessons had the same ingredients as so many of these books—the decision to buy a disreputable property and fix it up, the conniving real estate broker with his own ideas, the colorful local characters, and the inevitable disasters and triumphs in the process of building a home.

I’m not sure why this book didn’t captivate me as much as the other books I’ve read of this type. It seemed to have all the same ingredients, but somehow I wasn’t pulled in as thoroughly as with Extra Virgin, by Annie Hawes or In the Hills of Tuscany, by Ferenc Mate.

This wasn’t one that kept me reading until late at night, but I did enjoy dipping into it now and then over a couple of weeks. If you like cross-cultural stories, this one is at least worth checking out of the library.

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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

****Spanish Lessons*

Beginning a New Life in Spain

by Derek Lambert