Donkeys on my doorstep
Anna Nicholas's new book is a warm and intelligent account of expat life in Spain. Review by Leah Hyslop.
By Leah Hyslop
Published: 9:43AM BST 09 Jun 2010
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Anna Nicholas with one of her books.
I can only imagine that when Anna Nicholas, the owner of a successful London PR agency, announced to her colleagues that she was planning to resettle in Majorca, they thought she was utterly barking. Not only because she had impulsively decide to move her family to a ruined farmhouse in one of the island’s most rural areas - but because she fully intended to keep her day job when there.
Donkeys on my Doorstep is the fourth installment in her series about Majorcan life and like many books in the expats-in-Spain genre, is a light hearted, easy read. The book is filled with humorous anecdotes, from the arrival of the local "donkey whisperer" to a bizarre hazelnut throwing festival, and the Majorcan countryside is described in attentive, often lyrical detail. Nicholas's contrasts between the community spirit of her newfound home and the annonymity of London are well drawn, and the reader finds himself increasingly sympathetic to her growing desire to sever ties with her business.
It's the details about Nicholas's other life as a PR guru, however, that make Donkeys on my Doorstep so interesting. Expat tales of life in the Med can be tedious affairs - all sun, sand, and bloated descriptions of how to of install central heating in dilapidated farmhouses. Nicholas’ frenetic days spent in London, organising an increasingly bizarre series of PR events - highlights including a "drag hatter's tea party” and a haunted house stunt - complement the more gentle chapters, and elevate the book from simple escapism to a much more complicated story about the difficulties of balancing a life between two places. Towards the end, however, it is hinted that Nicholas’s endless plane journeys may soon be drawing to a close. How Majorca’s chalk will fare without its British cheese in the next installment of the series will be interesting to see.
Nicholas's affection for Majorca is largely inspired by the usual suspects - plenty of sun, friendly neighbours, and the space to pursue interests as diverse as buying donkeys, learning about mushrooms and making the perfect lemon curd. She's also however fascinated by the island’s past. We learn on one page about the decline of Majorca's textile industry, and on another the poetic symbolism behind castells, the human pyramids created in Spanish fiestas, which Nicholas’s neighbour Pep tells her are intended to represent "Catalan nation unity”. Such a vast quantity of factual snippets make the book as intelligent as it is entertaining.
The most interesting of all these snippets are those relayed in Nicholas’s encounters with Michel, a survivor of the Spanish civil war who tells a segment of his own personal tragedy each time they meet. Michel's reminiscences provide the book with important glimpses of that darker past, which other books of expat life in Spain too often overlook. Even more importantly, the slowly unravelled mystery of his past creates a forward momentum through what is otherwise a series of disparate anecdotes - keeping the reader engrossed until the final, moving chapter.
By the time that finale rolls around, you'll find yourself rather envious of Nicholas's life on her “magical” island. That said, I really don’t think I could handle her commute.
* Donkeys on my Doorstep: Hoofing it in the Mallorcan Hills by Anna Nicholas is published by Summersdale. You can buy it here.
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