Review by The Mole
Carol has returned to the olive farm and starts to consider the impact of olive farming on the ecology around the farm. Having started to evaluate this she sets about trying to go "organic" - not truly understanding at the start what this entails.
People who write anything autobiographical are very brave and taking a big risk. The risk is that when people see the person behind the celebrity they may find them dull or take a dislike to the person. But do we see the real person anyway? We all show different aspects of ourselves in different situations and hide the real person from public gaze. In Carol's book I felt that a lot of the time - that there was a Carol in there that was hiding from the public. In the early part of the book I felt like I was being cheated somehow. As the book continues Carol's passion for the environment comes more to the fore and with it her defence is relaxed and we start to see more of the real Carol. I learned a good deal about "organic" farming and some of the "hippy", "airy fairy", "off piste" ideas that we are fed about "organic" farming suddenly start to have context and a relevance and lose the label I just gave them. I had understood "organic" to be what you put into the soil and onto the plants but Carol manages to explain through her experience how it's much more and WHY it's so much more.
I did get to understand the real Carol a bit more than I think she intended and am grateful for it.
Although I found it difficult to get into, I did really enjoy it once the defences started to come down. It's well worth a read by anyone who reads autobiographies or is worried about the environment or even concerned about the food we eat.
Publisher: Orion books
Genre: Non-Fiction, Autobiographical
Buy Return to the Olive Farm
from Amazon
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