Review: Vintage Tottie and there's NOTHING better than that!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 25, 2014
I fell in love with this author's wonderful prose and her wry-but-resolute, off-beat-but-up-beat attitude toward life when I read her first book SELL THE PIG.  Her follow-up book (IS THAT BILLINGE LUMP? ) is just as delightful.  If you haven't read them you should.The Tither menage (Tottie, her brother, and their 90-year-old Mum) relocated from the UK to France to take advantage of low property prices and to pool resources to allow them to care for their mother at home.  Four years later, Nell slipped quietly into the next world.  A funeral was held, with Tottie's eccentric, alcoholic brother in his usual fine form.  He then set off for Wales with his mother's ashes and his sister's fervent prayers that he would actually get the ashes to Mum's home town and bury them with the rest of her family.  We'll see.Relieved of care-giving responsibilities and realizing that Life-With-Brother would be impossible without an escape hatch, Tottie sets about renovating her "grottage" (grotty cottage) in the wilds of rural Auverne.  Of course turning an ancient building which is rich in charm and ambiance but sans plumbing or electricity into a livable home is a major undertaking anywhere.  The frustrations of dealing with the multi-layered French bureaucracy doesn't help.Fortunately, our Tottie is tough and resourceful and (best of all) able to see the humor in even the most hair-tearing of set-backs.  And we get to go along for the very entertaining ride in the comfort of our own (plumbed and electrified) homes.  If you like to read and like to laugh, you're going to enjoy this book.  It's supposed to be the last of the series, but I'm hoping she changes her mind.  I would certainly miss getting a regular dose of her gutsy humor.