Review: What a woman!  What a book!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 23, 2014
I've read a few expat biographies before, I have friends and relatives who have made the move to foreign climes but I can honestly say I have never read any of this type of book as good as this one before. I had seen this in the amazon recommendations and read a few reviews-some readers mentioned about there being a lot of errors in this book-well I wouldn't agree. Yes there are a few, eg. two missing commas in the acknowledgement page, but hey, the book is so good it really doesn't matter, it more than makes up for it. This isn't your average story of a family deciding to swop their normal lives for a place in the sun and having loads of money to get their luxury home; Jill's plans all turn sour when her husband is found to be having an affair with an ex-neighbour in England and he never makes the move to Italy, leaving Jill and her three children alone with no job. Jill is an amazing woman and she makes a go of things, a real strong character, she can turn her hand to anything. I really admire her, it's amazing to think what she has achieved and she is just about my age and from the town where I live. I would have liked some photos in the book but there is a link to her website and an excellent collection of photo albums on there. The pictures don't take ages to load and they are separated into albums relevant to each chapter. It's nice to see a Huddersfield Town shirt in one of them! There are so many adventures and problems which happen and it's amazing how Jill keeps her 'chin up' throughout each episode, always ending with a jokey punch line. Her ex-husband is mentioned quite a few times but she just tells it like it is, doesn't bad-mouth him and doesn't name him, very dignified about it all. I like the diary format, the book does have structure (one reviewer said it didn't) it is very well presented. Being a musician, I like how Jill often mentions exactly what track she was listening to on the radio or CD at the time as it helps conjure up the atmosphere, a nice touch. Great descriptive writing about the foods-so good you can almost taste them! Jill also includes recipes in the book which also really add to it. I could go on ages about the excellence of this book. Jill is just one year younger than me and yet she's dealt with so much. A memoir with balls! (Hope I can say that in a review!) Some of this reads like a novel, yet this really happened to Jill. I feel she would be successful writing a novel and I also hope she writes a sequel to A Single Parent Abroad-I've read somewhere that she is so I do hope this comes to fruition.