In the High Pyrenees

by Bernard Loughlin

On the day after the death of Franco, Bernard Loughlin made his first visit to Farrera, a village in the Catalan Pyrenees. There, in a chilly seventeenth-century church, he and his Belfast sweetheart, Mary, were married; and there, by candlelight, Mary gave birth to their first child. Bernard and Mary spent the next two decades in Ireland, running the artists' retreat at Annaghmakerrig. When they left in 1999, under the shadow of a terrible crime committed by a neighbour against their children, their destination was Farrera. They were starting a new life. "In the High Pyrenees" is a loving and often hilarious account of the smells, sensations and neighbourly intrigues of a mountain village. In gorgeous, vivid prose, Bernard Loughlin tells the many stories of this out-of-the-way place, where a varied cast of outsiders live alongside a handful of remaining Catalan peasants and their modernizing offspring. This is a tale of struggles - to restore an old house and garden on a vertiginous mountainside; to wangle a mortgage from sceptical Catalan bankers; to start a business; to overcome the ghosts of the Loughlins' Irish past. And it is a story of joy - in the warmth of village hospitality, in the spectacular Pyrenees landscape, and in the Loughlins' growing certainty that this extraordinary place is home.

Genres: Travel

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Zooworld · Rating 1 out of 5]

This has to be the worst book I have ever read, and if I could I would give it zero stars. The writing is long-winded and convoluted, and I found myself wading though vast swathes of text in order to get to the plot. Anyone reading this risks serious mental instability.

[Emily Lee · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why use one adjective when fifty will do? I found the style unreadable, the sentences infinitely drifty and the endless listing to be incredibly frustrating. Another travel book that thinks evoking time and place is about listing endless foods you ate. Grrrrr.

The cover was very pretty though.