Spanish Lessons: How One Family Found Their Place in the Sun Book

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 BuckleyRead More