Snowball Oranges: A Winter's Tale on a Spanish Isle

I get the feeling that having read one book of northern Europeans moving South and having culture shock, you have read them all.

If you want another in this category, this one will do. Fairly well written, the episodes and characters are fairly interesting, but the main point is the stupid things the author and his family do because of not understanding the culture. (On the other hand, if you are planning to move to Mallorca yourself, this would be a good preparation for learning what not to do.)

Marked down another half star for the totally unsympathetic description of a German-speaking family. The most aggravating part of this book is the author's inability to see that his bumbling is just as ridiculous and out of place.

Peter Kerr, his wife Ellie, and their two sons trade Scotland for an orange farm on the Spanish island of Majorca. As they discover the many instances of deferred maintenance they have inherited, adjust to the new country, and come to know their new neighbors, the Kerr's are the recipients of great generosity and good will. The culmination of this chapter of their story is a highly entertaining New Years Eve Celebration.

enjoy reading travel books when the British weather is cold and miserable and `Snowball Oranges' seemed like the perfect read for transporting me to the Med. On the face of it, it seemed to have likeable enough characters and the writing was decent- but it just took me ages to get through- at least 3 days. I'm a fast reader and usually would have finished this in around three or four hours, but I had to keep picking it up and putting it down again when I found my attention wandering. Unfortunately I never became fully immersed in Peter and Ellie's story which was a real shame.

The book follows Scotsman Peter, his wife Ellie and their two children, Charlie and Sandy, who up-sticks and take on an orange farm in the secluded Mallorcan show more mountains. They quickly come to realise however, that their idyllic dream might not be quite what they had hoped and that they have a lot to learn about the Mallorcan way of life.

Filled with anecdotes and amusing stories, it was admittedly a pleasant enough way to pass the time, though I just didn't find Peter to be a wholly engaging storyteller if I'm honest. I also felt that (maybe because I read so many books like this?) the book was a bit predictable in places with the ex-pats getting ripped off by the locals and trying to ingratiate themselves with the neighbours. This grew a bit tedious after a while. I also can't help feeling that the Kerr's were just very naive in just accepting the farm at face value without doing any proper research into what they were ultimately taking on- no wonder they had so many problems with it, along with the irritating Mallorcan bureaucracy which meant that things always got rectified later, rather than sooner!

For me, one of the main sticking points with this book was the Spanish words thrown into a sentence casually, intermingled with the British ones. It just didn't feel necessary. Kerr himself explains that his Spanish is basic, though he can exchange words with his neighbours. Why bother having half a sentence in English and then random Spanish words chucked in just for the sake of it? Was it to impress the reader or something? It felt very clunky and again, irritated me.

Overall, this was an easy enough read, hence the three stars, but I just didn't enjoy it as much as other travel writers works I've read in the past- prime examples being Annie Hawes', Carol Drinkwater and Peter Mayle to name but a few. I would probably try another one of Kerr's books if I came across it in a charity shop, but I wouldn't be in any immediate hurry to hunt one out.

*This review also appears on Amazon.co.uk* show less