Product Description

Now in paperback, the #1 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller that is an enchanting and lyrical look at the life, the traditions, and the cuisine of Tuscany, in the spirit of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence.

Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people. In Under the Tuscan Sun, she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and to feast at her table.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #301549 in Books
• Published on: 1997-09-01
• Released on: 1997-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780767900386
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
In this memoir of her buying, renovating, and living in an abandoned villa in Tuscany, Frances Mayes reveals the sensual pleasure she found living in rural Italy, and the generous spirit she brought with her. She revels in the sunlight and the color, the long view of her valley, the warm homey architecture, the languor of the slow paced days, the vigor of working her garden, and the intimacy of her dealings with the locals. Cooking, gardening, tiling and painting are never chores, but skills to be learned, arts to be practiced, and above all to be enjoyed. At the same time Mayes brings a literary and intellectual mind to bear on the experience, adding depth to this account of her enticing rural idyll.

From Publishers Weekly
Mayes's favorite guide to Northern Italy allots seven pages to the town of Cortona, where she owns a house. But here she finds considerably more to say about it than that, all of it so enchanting that an armchair traveler will find it hard to resist jumping out of the chair and following in her footsteps. The recently divorced author is euphoric about the old house in the Tuscan hills that she and her new lover renovated and now live in during summer vacations and on holidays. A poet, food-and-travel writer, Italophile and chair of the creative writing department at San Francisco State University, Mayes is a fine wordsmith and an exemplary companion whose delight in a brick floor she has just waxed is as contagious as her pleasure in the landscape, architecture and life of the village. Not the least of the charms of her book are the recipes for delicious meals she has made. Above all, her observations about being at home in two very different cultures are sharp and wise.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In a carefully written story, poet Mayes (Ex Voto, Lost Roads, 1995), who chairs the creative writing department at San Francisco State University, recounts the purchase and renovation of an abandoned Tuscan villa. She begins with the 1990 search with her companion, Ed, for a summer home to take the place of the rented farmhouses of past years. They finally decide on Bramasole ("Yearning for the Sun"), a villa with 17 rooms and a garden that has been standing empty for 30 years. There is the ordeal of getting money transferred via the tangled Italian banking system, as well as bringing together the owner, builders, and government officials to get the necessary work done. The daunting process requires several years. Meanwhile, Mayes finds Italian country life a healthy antidote to hectic San Francisco, enjoying, for example, the fruits of her own garden, friends in the village, and the first olive harvest. This is an unusual memoir of one woman's challenge to herself and its successful transformation into a satisfying opportunity to improve the quality of her life.?William R. Smith, Johns Hopkins Univ. Lib., Baltimore
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Richly written - a great escape
As someone who is used to taking frequent Mediterranean vacations but was marooned stateside this past summer, I thanked my lucky stars for happening upon this book. It was just the escape I needed. As I got deeper into it, I felt myself becoming more and more enamored with Tuscany, Bramasole and its cast of characters. Mayes hits her stride with rich, textured detail of her environment after the first 50 pages or so. Before that, she gets a little too bogged down in renovation process. I really felt that I was there, right down to hearing the crickets singing in the hot summer sun. Unlike so many others who reviewed this book, I was not offended at all by her descriptions of the Tuscan locals or the lifestyle. She was very complimentary and respectful of everyone she wrote about. One thing that could have been left out - the references to Mayes childhood that screamed "I'm wealthy!" The recipe chapters were an added bonus and inspired me to get cooking. Try the mushroom lasagna with bechamel sauce in the later food chapter - it's divine. The bottom line - if you're looking for a wry, humorous account of life as an expatriate, a la Peter Mayle, this book won't do it for you. But if you want to immerse yourself in a richly written tribute to the rolling hills of a gorgeous, faraway land, Tuscan Sun is not to be missed.

Enough, already!
It's time to toss out your copy of "Under the Tuscan Sun" with the rest of the junk you're disposing of during spring cleaning, and replace it with a much wiser and better book about a foreigner's experiences in Italy: Annie Hawes' memoir "Extra Virgin." If you've never heard of Annie Hawes, that's not surprising, since the best-seller sensation created by "Tuscan Sun" has pretty much drowned it out.

What's wrong with Frances Mayes' volume, you may ask. Just about everything. We all know her basic story by now: American woman buys dilapidated villa in Tuscany (just outside Cortona), and spends a fortune restoring, decorating, furnishing, and appointing it, while coyly refusing to acknowledge the virtually unlimited financial resources that make all that possible. Thanks to a well-chosen title and sharp marketing, she managed to tap into the fantasies of millions of American readers, most of whom will never set foot in Tuscany, much less own a villa there.

Her book is full of smug, self-congratulatory prose- verbal "O lucky me!" hand-clapping- along with recipes, and "vacations from her vacation" in Tuscany with her mysterious gentleman friend, identified only as "Ed."

Mayes tries to be lyrical and profound in her effusions about Tuscany, but instead comes across as shallow, pretentious, self-absorbed, and condescending. When I analyzed what it is that I find so obnoxious about Mayes, I realized that a good part of my annoyance comes from her patronizing attitude toward Italians, and her mind-boggling degree of ignorance of Italian culture, religion, art, and history.

She thinks Italians were put on this earth for her personal entertainment- they're so quaint, with their funny hand gestures and odd little customs that she makes no effort to understand. Or else, they exist to perform whatever manual labor at her villa she finds too heavy or too tedious, and whatever skilled labor her exacting Martha Stewart standards of decorating demand. At no point does she form any meaningful relationships with Italians- they're either her household servants, her day laborer-employees, the shopkeepers from whom she makes her unending stream of purchases, or the few snobbish rich people who associate with her only because of her own wealth. She finds the Italian version of Catholicism amusing, and wants a holy water font for home decoration.

Her comments on Italian art are pretentious, poorly informed, and without a single interesting insight. Her one moment of humility comes when she admits her difficulties in learning Italian. (An informant in Cortona tells me that even after a decade spent mostly in Italy, Mayes still speaks terrible Italian, with an appalling accent.)

But so what? She doesn't need to know Italian. Mayes lives in the insulated dreamworld that only the very wealthy can afford to build around themselves. There are no poor people in Mayes' book, nobody unemployed, nobody mentally ill or physically disabled. No word on the tragic swathe that heroin and cocaine addiction has cut through even the smallest and most remote Italian towns. Nothing about the intractable problem of illegal immigrants flooding the Italian peninsula from Eastern Europe and Africa, although she is happy to hire Polish laborers, implying that they work harder and produce better results than Italians. In passing she mentions the puzzling presence of African prostitutes by a roadside, but then hurries back to her interminable musings on selecting a competent gardener, or stonemason, or woodworker, trying to make up her mind between tile or marble for the renovation of her many bathrooms, or buying yet another set of antique linens. The parties she gives and attends are so unvaryingly elegant that you start wishing someone would belch, tell a dirty joke, get nastily drunk, come down with a case of Tuscan Tummy, or admit to cravings for a Big Mac. Did I mention that Mayes has absolutely NO sense of humor?

Readers seem divided between those who are ecstatic over the book, and those in whom it activated the gag reflex. Count this reader among the latter.

Does Ms. Mayes really know any Italians?
Background: I lived and worked in Italy for a year, and have since returned for a total time of about two years spent in central Italy, primarly Bologna and the Lazio region. I speak Italian well, and have very close Italian friends whom I see regularly. I passionately love the country, its traditions, language and culture, and when I picked up 'Under the Tuscan Sun', it was in the hopes of finding a kindred spirt of sorts, an American with a love for Italy and all it has to offer.

Boy, was I wrong. At one point, I threw the book across the room in disgust. I finished the book, as I wanted to discover the answer to the questions I developed early on: Did Ms. Mayes ever talk to any Italian who didn't work for her? Does she have Italian friends who aren't financially obligated to her in some way or another? Does she know any Italians that she can invite for dinner with no business goal to discuss? Has she ever really listened to what any of them have to say, or do the ubiquitous hand gestures that so fascinate her monopolize her thought processes all the time? In all the years that she has been going to Italy, has she ever made a close Italian friend? My conclusion to all of these questions by the end of the book was negative.

I have two Italian friends that read and speak English, and I gave them a copy of the book, without letting them know how I felt ahead of time. Their reactions were the same as mine: they were insulted by her condescending descriptions. It's an old story for Italians -- Americans and British expatriates long for a place missing the messiness and tedium of everyday North American/British life, and invent one in Italy. The problem is, this invented reality leaves out the day to day lives of everyday Italians. It's a fantasy life for expatriates rich enough to afford the illusion, but it doesn't allow for actual Italians.

Basically, I agree with a reviewer above: This is Martha Stewart does Italy. Ms. Mayes is a good writer, so it's well-described Martha Stewart book, but fundamentally it's lacking in any depth at all. This book is just another addition to the long series of books and movies about those cute, rustic Italians and their adorable hand gestures.