I thought this book would be something like Dirty Chick– but it wasn’t. Similarity: it’s about a family that decided to move to their favorite vacation spot, putting down new roots in northern Vermont. From city to rural area, with all the adjustments that takes. Everything else is different. This book isn’t nearly as funny as it wants to be, and a lot of it just rubbed me the wrong way. It doesn’t help that the author’s personality is the complete opposite of mine- though I can often like reading varied points of view. But the focus was all wrong here. Or at least, what the author thought readers would find interesting, funny and endearing, just had me shaking my head or cringing. Rather like my reaction to A Dog Called Perth. Let’s keep this painful thing short: I was expecting to read about the author’s attempt to embrace a rural lifestyle: raising chickens, chasing wayward goats, dealing with the weather, etc. And it is, but only in small bits. The best parts are mentioned in the blurbs, front jacket flap and intro- so there’s not much else to get to inside the pages. There’s an encounter with a bear, a fight with a skunk, the adopting of two bottle-fed lambs which ends awkwardly (they had no plans what to do when it grew up). There’s effusive descriptions of the scenery and the changing seasons- and that’s about it.
Most of the book is about their misguided attempts to run a local general store, their poor business decisions, their excitable plans that never quite turn out, and exactly how they made such a poor impression on all the locals. It’s the kind of book where the author obviously wants you to laugh along with her, at her (with plenty of oddly-placed footnotes tongue-in-cheek explaining that), but I didn’t. I got tired of reading about mismanaged money and ditching this attempt to start another before she’d even got the store off their hands. In the end I was skimming pages. There’s recipes in the back- they all sound delicious but also very dense and rich (I probably won’t try any). It is very readable, though. A light, breezy conversational style that you can get through quickly. Just not at all my cup of tea.
Borrowed from the public library.