Only in Spain

March 31, 2014
Bennett’s transformational adventure parlays into a fun, sparkling memoir. As an unmarried young 20-something toiling as a shopgirl in a Sydney department store, the plucky protagonist feels directionless, but when she spots an advertisement for a flamenco school she signs up, and the class ignites a passion for the dance and Spanish culture: “After years of feeling lost, I suddenly knew what it was that I wanted out of life.” Soon her journey into the flamenco world leads the anxious vegan (“some people thrive under pressure, but not me”) to Seville to immerse herself as deeply in the art as she can, all while savoring (meaty) tapas and deep-fried churros, and dancing all night. She falls for her flamenco teacher and in love with Seville. The book is most compelling when Bennett returns to Spain to live in Madrid and study at the apex of flamenco schools, Amor de Dios. While teaching English and trying to live on cheap gazpacho, she develops a fascination with Gypsies even dating a Gypsy boy, which lands her in some trouble in a Gypsy ghetto, alone and “married”—according to Gypsy law.

May 15, 2014
A peripatetic Australian's account of how a flamenco dancing hobby led to high adventures in music, food and love in Spain.Bennett was a bored shop girl who worked at a high-end department store in Sydney. Tired of two years of mind-numbing, dead-end routine, she shook up her world with flamenco dance lessons, and she immediately fell in love with the glamour, fire and romance of the dance. Soon, she realized she wanted more than to simply take lessons; she wanted to "dream [her] life and live life like it was a dream" by making flamenco the center of her world. She decided to continue her dance studies in the ancient city of Seville in southern Spain. For six weeks, Bennett danced by day and immersed herself in flamenco bar culture by night. She learned to relish the pleasures of flirting on the dance floor with handsome, dark-eyed Spanish men, who made her feel as though she was "the star of her very own Broadway musical." The vegan Bennett even learned to enjoy savory tapas dishes made from meat. By the end of her stay, she knew she would return. Brimming with intentions to live in Spain indefinitely and aspirations to become a professional flamenco dancer, she flew to Madrid several months later. She attended the famous Amor de Dios flamenco academy and then danced with dangerously seductive neighborhood residents when she could no longer afford to go to the academy. After being kidnapped by a gypsy boyfriend who wanted to "marry" her by taking Bennett home with him, she fell in love with a Basque man with whom she lived for three years. Only after her lover asked her what she wanted did the author recognize her one truest passion: to travel forever into the beautiful unknown.Lightweight, footloose good fun.

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May 1, 2014
Why don't you? This simple question took Nellie Bennett to a new life halfway around the world, as recounted in her frothy and fun memoir. A shopgirl at an Australian department store, Bennett is seduced by the charms of Spain as she studies flamenco dancing in Seville. But when she moves to Madrid for more dance classes, alone and broke, she finds life isn't all orange blossoms and late-night dancing. Bennett is endearingly forthright about her foibles and shortcomings. Her sincere love for the enthusiastic Spanish culture embodied in the expression toma que toma (roughly take it, take it ) overrides the sometimes clich'd aspects of her storytelling, such as her focus on the liquid dark eyes of the handsome Spanish men. Although she has her flirtations and finds romance, at its core this is a love story about a dance, a country, and an approach to life. Similar to Eat, Pray, Love, but on a less ambitious scale, Only in Spain celebrates the possibilities that arise when, instead of Why? one asks, Why not? (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)