In Brief
- Read by: Author-read, which for a comic memoir keeps the writing and the timing in the same hands rather than routing the jokes through an interpreter.
- At its heart: Expatriate life on a mountain farm in southern Spain, an accidental bestseller, a valley under threat, a wandering early career
- Vibe: Warm, digressive, unhurried
- Short version: Ideal company for anyone who already liked the first book, and thin as a standalone travelogue.
Sequels to accidental bestsellers are usually a problem, and Chris Stewart solves this one by widening the frame rather than repeating the trick. Driving Over Lemons made a hit out of a remote farm in Las Alpujarras, the odd stretch of Spain south of Granada. This audiobook picks up the same household, adds a thoroughly antisocial parrot, and then does something the first book could not: it goes backward, into the decades that produced the man who bought the farm. Stewart reads all six hours and forty-six minutes himself.
First, the Big Picture
Present-day chapters run on domestic comedy. Chris, Ana and their daughter Chloe negotiate Spanish school life, neighbors falling in love, the parrot's campaign against the household, and the strange experience of finding oneself on bestseller lists while still shoveling out a farmyard. Underneath that runs a genuine threat: the valley they live in faces a dam again, which gives an otherwise episodic book something to lean against.
The flashbacks are the surprise. Shearing sheep through midwinter in Sweden and driving across frozen sea to reach island farms. A first encounter with Spain at twenty, learning flamenco guitar. And a music career that includes drumming for a school band called Genesis, from which the author was sacked at seventeen, thereby not becoming Phil Collins. That last detail is deployed with the lightness of someone who has told it a hundred times and still finds it funny.
Proportion is what makes the book work. Stewart never lets the anecdotes accumulate into self-portraiture, and the comic register stays generous rather than superior about the neighbors, which is the failure mode of the entire expatriate-in-a-farmhouse genre. The writing is looser than the first book's and more digressive, and whether that reads as relaxation or as padding depends largely on how much you enjoyed the company the first time.
The Best Parts of A Parrot in the Pepper Tree
Self-narration is the first argument: this is read by the person it happened to. For a comic memoir that matters structurally: the pauses, the placement of the punchline at the end of the sentence, and the decision about which absurdity to underplay all originate with the same mind in both the text and the recording. Self-narration is a liability for a novelist and an asset for a raconteur, and this book is squarely the second thing.
Humor is the most consistently praised element in the pool. An August 2015 write-up describes settling in to be transported to the rural adventures of Chris, Ana and Chloe and their menagerie, and singles out the comic skill as the reason for finishing all three books in the sequence. Read alongside the copy, that response confirms what the book is selling: company, not travelogue.
Practically, six and three-quarter hours is well judged for the material. Episodic memoir gets tiring past about eight hours, and this one ends before the anecdotes start to feel interchangeable. The chapter breaks are frequent, the Spanish place names are handled by someone who lives among them, and no map or glossary is needed to follow anything, which is not true of every travel book.
A Few Reservations
Genre labeling deserves the scrutiny one response already gave it. In March 2011 a four-star grade pointed out that the book is classified as travel writing even though the author does not travel in it, and instead tells stories about staying put. That is a fair objection to how this record is shelved, and a useful warning: if you want movement, distance and arrival, this is a book about a farm and the people within walking distance of it.
Most of that same response is spent on the difficulty of obtaining a copy in the first place, describing two bookstores that could not find it in their systems and a two-week wait for a book shipped from England. It is a snapshot of how the title reached readers before this recording existed, and a reminder that some grades on a listing are verdicts on a supply chain.
Chronology is the stark part here. The audio edition dates from the end of October 2024, while the five written responses carry dates of 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2017. Every one of them predates the audio by at least seven years, and the oldest by thirteen, so the 4.4 average describes a printed book that had already been through a decade of book clubs before anyone recorded a word.
The Right Listener for A Parrot in the Pepper Tree
Readers of the first book, first and foremost, and the pool is emphatic about the order. A January 2014 response describes loving Driving Over Lemons, waiting years to get to this one, and finding it did not disappoint, with more anecdotes about oddball neighbors and a renewed urge to visit the region. Starting here is possible, since the opening reintroduces the premise, but the affection the book relies on gets built in volume one.
Domestic comedy with real landscape in it is the other draw, along with an interest in the Alpujarras beyond the coastal resorts. The specific pleasure on offer is the sense of actually living somewhere rather than visiting it, told with humor and without condescension, which is as good a summary of the genre's appeal as any critic has managed.
Digression is the design here and the dam plot is a thread rather than a spine, so a listener who wants structure should look elsewhere. The same goes if the sound of a comfortable expatriate being amused by rural Spain sets your teeth on edge, because that is the register from start to finish. Approach it as an evening in good company and it does the job with room to spare.
A Few Questions About A Parrot in the Pepper Tree
Do I need to read Driving Over Lemons before this audiobook?
Not strictly. The opening reestablishes the farm, the family and the region, so the story is followable from a cold start. The catch is that most of the goodwill this book trades on was earned in the first volume, and one March 2012 grade describes buying all three at once and enjoying them in sequence.
Is this really a travel book?
Only loosely. Nobody sets out on a journey here. The book stays in one valley in southern Spain, covering local politics, schooling, neighbors and a long strand of flashbacks, so expect the pleasures of settled place-writing rather than itineraries, arrivals or unfamiliar cities.
Does the author narrate the audiobook himself?
Yes. Chris Stewart reads all six hours and forty-six minutes of his own memoir. For comic writing that is a meaningful arrangement, because the timing of a joke and the decision to underplay an absurdity come from the same person who wrote the sentence in the first place.
