A Boatful of Lemons: An Unforgettable Summer on the Amalfi Coast

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He took me to this little place where he always stayed, one of these smaller family owned places, Casa Cosenza.

of Lemons: An Unforgettable Summer on the Ama… A Boatful of Lemons: An Unforgettable Summer on the Ama…

And this is why I self published as well. I didn't want to go the route of sending it off to publishers and having people reject it. When I got a job in 2001 working in a hotel as the hostess in a restaurant the chef would bit by bit teach me how to make little things like certain pasta sauces and how to cook fish and things like that. Gradually over time I learned from people in shops and people in hotels and people's grandmothers when I went to their houses. Wendy Holloway: I think whenever an author writes a book, even if it's fiction, you can't help but put yourself into it because you have your life of experiences, outlooks, and it has to come through in one way or another, in overt ways or very subtle ways and of course that's the case with you as well. You accurately portray life in Positano including local dishes and venues that have been around forever since the time when this book takes place.I can remember everybody being so horrified by me and slowly, slowly people teaching me how to feed myself. Wendy Holloway: I did look up the Bar Internazionale, which is kind of a classic historic bar. It’s been around forever.

A Boatful of Lemons: An Unforgettable Summer on the Amalfi

Time went on and Maria said, “Okay, it's getting late. Let's go up to the main road that winds through the town and we'll just sit at the bar and we'll wait for Maurizio.”Then I remembered a book I’d read called Seven Eves. It was science fiction, and I don't normally read science fiction, but it was a fascinating book. It was about how one day the moon broke into pieces, and everybody was like, oh what happened, what happened, and then eventually a scientist comes along and says, we shouldn't be concentrating on what happened, we need to concentrate on what's going to happen next, what are the consequences are of this.

A Boatful of Lemons: An Unforgettable Summer on the Ama…

Wendy Holloway: One final question about the book title, A Boatful of Lemons. My feeling is that there was a scene with Francesco, the main love interest, on a boat and he has all these lemons that spill into the boat and it seemed to me that was the inspiration.

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And then the other one that we go to quite often is our nearest restaurant to home, the Ritrovo up in Montepertuso, which is a beautiful little restaurant in the little piazza up in the town square. Wendy Holloway: You have a lot of discussion about food in the book. Are you a passionate cook or are you just passionate about food and thought you'd include things like a cooking class and some recipes that really make you drool when you read them? So I might think to myself, okay, we've got all these vegetables now. I really should go into the kitchen and make something out of them. I look at what I have and say, I can make this and I can make that. So I go to the kitchen, got the phone on a little tripod. And everything takes double the time because you're moving the camera around and trying to film yourself chopping vegetables and cooking. I decided I wanted to write a story based in Positano and I wanted it to be fiction, but I wanted to include a lot of little things that happened to me over the years. I've been living here for 24 years. It's enough time to accumulate a lot of experiences. Wendy Holloway: I think it takes a decade or more before you really feel that the new reality in Positano, or in Rome, or whatever Italian place it is gets into you and becomes more what's “you” than not.