Lead Review (It Started with Malaga)

• Book: It Started With Malaga
• Location: Málaga, Southern Spain
• Author: Karen O’Connor

Review Author: tripfiction

3.75*

Málaga is one of those cities – billed as Spain’s most hospitable city – that is only rarely on travellers’ radars. People pass through it, given it has a very efficient airport, to places along the Costa del Sol and only rarely stop to take a look. But it is worth more than just a look. In this memoir the author spends a whole week in the city and hardly gets under the skin of it in that short time.

Photo; the author

The author decides to accompany her son on his work trip and books herself an apartment on Calle Victoria in the heart of the old town. It was a fairly last minute decision, a matter of weeks to prepare, and in the early part of the book the exuberance of having decided to go is palpable. The preparations get into full swing and the excitement mounts. She books outings and trips in advance and immerses herself in the language in preparation, and delightfully, chooses to read novels set in the city by Joan Fallon; but, in those early days I felt for the author because she received a significant level of disinterest for her project from her husband. Which was sad. But finally mother and son arrive in Málaga.

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Their first day is a whirlwind of sights and tapas and the author wonderfully brings the city to life, tempered with her anxieties, determined to maximise the trip.

Photo credit: Tom Geary / Lydia Reeve

Bodega El Pimpi – the cavernous restaurant part owned by Antonio Banderas – inevitably gets a look in. There is paella making (and musings on whether València owns paella or not) and a quick history of the Spanish Civil War, followed by a day trip by train out to the Alhambra in Granada. The week in April 2024 is certainly an intensive tour of the city that leaves the reader breathless. She is also clear that that week away took her out of the lingering funk of the Covid years, and acknowledges that in so many ways it was good to set herself the challenge and go. It proved so rewarding on many levels.

She decides on a signature blue jacket, which means she can easily be found in crowds by an appointed tour guide, and on the cover her nod to this important piece of clothing is clear: “Blue Jacket Travels”

This first trip is assuredly not the author’s last trip. She has a lightness of touch describing her adventures, she includes quite a few tips along the way that have worked for her, and divulges much about her inner thoughts and the inevitable worries that face a lone female traveller (although on the journeys there and back and for a day or so, she did have the company of her son).

Photo: the author

This is a sweetly written memoir that offers insights, a large amount of detail (occasionally a little extraneous) and offering suggestions for anyone heading out to this beautiful city.

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