Carol Drinkwater's "The Olive Farm" told the tale of her real-life romance with partner Michel and an abandoned Provencal olive farm which they fell in love with and bought - a double love story. In this sequel, the couple approach the harvest and entice readers back to their Mediterranean world.
Now, in the 2nd of the Olive trilogy, The Olive Season, Carol is pregnant and their ever-loyal gardener is leaving to oversee the marriage of his son. Often unassisted, and with new challenges to face, Carol takes on the bulk of the farm work alone. Water is, as ever, a costly problem, and she goes in search of a diviner who promises almost magical results.
Carol Drinkwater's "The Olive Farm" told the lyrical tale of her real-life romance with partner Michel and an abandoned Provencal olive farm which they fell in love with and bought - a double love story, recounting with wit, warmth and detail the couple's attempts to bring their dreams to life. "The Olive Season" begins with their realisation of another dream, a tropical island wedding. Returning to France, they find ever-reliable Arab gardener Quashia is leaving to marry off his youngest son. It is a bad blow. To gain the coveted AOC rating, Carol needs to plant a further 250 olive trees. Now, pregnant and often unassisted, she will have to do the bulk of the farm work. She struggles to find a water diviner to check for sources on the property. Then there is the matter of locating an elusive beekeeper who she hopes will place hives on the land in exchange for honey. As the harvest season approaches, dramatic tensions cast dark shadows over the olive farm. "The Olive Season" entices readers back into Carol and Michel's vibrant Mediterranean world.
Author info:
Actress Carol Drinkwater is the author of the highly successful travel memoir THE OLIVE FARM and several novels.
Nielsen review:
'The new leader of the pack' - The Times 'Beautifully written with a great sense of humour, it captures perfectly the dreamy atmosphere of the south of France and its people - Woman and Home 'Charming and well written' - Daily Mail 'A spellbinding memoir' - Choice
Kirkus review:
A fussy, lugubrious sequel to The Olive Farm (2001), with the actress author's moods swinging madly from rapture to complaint to melancholy. The meandering, distracted course these ruminations will take is evident from the opening salvo recounting Drinkwater's wedding on one of the tiny Cook Islands in the South Pacific. Once she gets back to her Provencal olive farm, the scene is all juniper and lavender and a baby on the way, with plenty of ripe prose: "The sun is rising into honeydew clouds that drift out of sight." Then she moves on to the obligatory, endless fencing with the French bureaucracy (Drinkwater and her husband are trying to get regional certification of their olive grove) and the difficulty of getting laborers to either get on with their work or get the work done correctly. ("These apiarists are an irritatingly cranky and elusive breed.") Drinkwater drops too many French words into the text only to translate them in the next breath ("Le figuier. The fig. Its botanical origins are uncertain but . . ."), giving it a clubfoot to go along with the anxious prose, which caroms off bee fossils, the origin of bamboo, dinner ingredients, and Napoleon's reputation. She conveys an impression of overactivity rather than attentiveness and doesn't get a good fix on any of her subjects. A devastating miscarriage, coupled with the news that she will likely never be able to bear children, plays against the tedious backdrop of the television show Drinkwater is shooting at the time. While she grapples with her feelings, she also tackles the story of a diviner who comes to find water for their orchard expansion, perhaps the most focused episode here, and certainly the best. Flashing fruity, then penumbral, with little surety of itself. (Kirkus Reviews)
