Published by Summersdale, 2016, 272 pages

If there is a thread running through this book, it’s chickens. Chickens who behave like domestic pets or attack dogs, and rescued battery hens who wander around in little knitted pullovers or leather capes.

Anna Nicholas used to live in London and ran a public relations consultancy for luxury retail and travel. Fed up of the stressful big city life, she moved her husband and teenage son to rural Mallorca, Spain, in the mid-2000s.

They live among chickens, a dog, a cat, a donkey, and other animals. And Nicholas’s buddy, Jack, a toad who visits the pond when the weather warms up and with whom Nicholas has long conversations.  

Then there are the chickens. Cordelia, who follows her around everywhere and is fascinated by her sneakers because she thinks the laces are worms; and Ferdinand, an old cockerel who has a tendency to attack strangers (including a Jehovah’s Witness whom Nicholas found halfway up a tree, clutching a Bible to his chest).

Nicholas writes about Mallorca with a lot of affection, both the place and the people. When Jorge, the postman, delivers the mail, he waits until she opens her parcels, out of curiosity. Catalina, who is her housekeeper, is also a friend with strong opinions on how things should be done. When her neighbor, Fernando, has a problem with snails, Nicholas’s husband suggests that he use beer to get rid of them. Fernando tells his mother, and finds her in the kitchen, plying the snails with beer from a bowl.

But Nicholas still consults as a PR person, and there is a huge contrast between rural Mallorca and ritzy London. Some of the funniest moments in this book have to do with her clients, who range from eccentric to this side of crazy.

The star of this part of the story is definitely Henrietta, an aristocrat who saves battery chickens, who are treated so badly that they lose their feathers. So she, with a little help from like-minded people, knits them little sweaters until their feathers grow back. Henrietta, like Nicholas, has names for every single hen she’s rescued and introduces visitors to all of them. 

I loved Nicholas’s descriptions of the animals and the people she meets. My gripe was that she inserts dialogue where it isn’t really needed—for example, when describing a place, which sometimes felt stilted. But there are enough laugh-out-loud moments in the book to make it worthwhile. And she captures what it is like to live in a friendly, rural community in Spain. 

This review first appeared on Women on the Road.