Knowing I had spent time on the beaches and in the hill country of Liguria, Italy searching for my Italian cousins, my neighbor recommended Extra Virgin, a memoir by Annie Hawes. In 1983, two Brits -- a pale Annie Hawes and her equally pale sister -- left England for the sun-drenched olive groves of a small Italian village in Liguria.With fantasies of handsome, tanned men and swimming in the sea urging them on, they are hired for ten weeks to graft roses. of which they have little knowledge, along the Italian Riviera, room and board included. But none of the men seem to be under 40, and Ligurians have starkly different customs and outlooks in life compared to the Anglos from London.
Having experienced most of Liguria on multiple excursions myself, it's clear that Hawes captures the quirkiness and beauty of the hinterlands of the region as she and her sister become captivated by the quirkiness and beauty of the remote high country, and are bemused, charmed and ultimately accepted by the eccentric inhabitants of Diano San Pietro.
Some excerpts: "Glamour was not the outstanding feature of the village of Diano San Pietro. As far as the crusty olive-farming inhabitants were concerned, the Italian Riviera, a mere two miles away, might as well be on another planet. The lodging to spend the next ten weeks have turned out to be a tiny pair of tiled rooms above a barful of peasants."
"Diago San Pietro struggles up the steep foothills of the Mediterranean hinterland, its warped green shutters leaning into decrepit cobbled alleys overrun with leathery old men on erratic Vespas who call irately upon the Madonna as they narrowly miss mowing you down, with yowling feral cats and rusty tin cans full of improbably healthy geraniums."
In sheer contrast, "down on the coast, Diano San Marina has palm-shaded piazzas and an elegant marble-paved promenade along a wide blue sandy bay, the obvious refuge from the complexities of village life. Here, refreshingly, we are objects of interest to no one, no longer weirdly foreign generic strangers in a town accustomed to stranieri (foreigners)."
Extra Virgin is a great read, a captivating sampling of Italian life both on the Italian Riviera, and in hillsides rife with windy roads and olive orchards. The author captures both the remote rural high country and its peculiar inhabitants, and the trendy beaches more closely associated with Italy's public image, in describing Liguria with verve and humor.
