Under the Tuscan Sun (1996)

First let me tell you what this book isn’t. It’s nothing like the movie; it’s not a romance; and it isn’t even a book with much of a plot. Instead, it’s a beautiful collection of anecdotes loosely tied together by the progression of time. The primary focus is on the author’s experiences restoring a Tuscan villa, but her focus on food is a close second. Some of her experiences as a tourist remind me of a travel memoir, but I particularly enjoyed the other parts that describe the experience of actually living in Italy.

I read a lot of reviews before starting this book and they were a surprisingly mixed bag. There are both people who loved the book for its beauty and people who hated the book for its rambling and its discussions of food. Having read it, I can see where both groups are coming from. The writing is amazing. The author’s descriptions make it possible to see the beauty of Tuscany and her philosophical musings were both insightful and relatable. I enjoyed her descriptions of food and was excited she included so many recipes. This book also had a certain charm shared by Dewey and At Home in Mitford. The author’s life in Italy just seems so wonderful and simple, that reading about is relaxing and refreshing.

A bigger problem is what many of the very negative reviews noted. No, not that the book was not like the movie, although that complaint was common. The bigger problem was that the book had no plot, no forward drive. There were a few chapters where the author didn’t discuss the renovation of the house and these felt particularly disconnected. Even the chapters that were tied together by her progress renovating contained random anecdotes and musings, plus a heavy focus on food, which could make things drag. Basically, the author is very good at beautiful and philosophical writing; at writing about landscapes and food; at telling amusing anecdotes; and at sharing just enough of her background that you can understand the memories new things call to mind. She’s not very good at organizing things and there really is no plot. So if you’re looking for a romantic description of Italy, this is the book for you. If you’re looking for an actual romance, just watch the movie.

This review first published on Doing Dewey. ( )

This is a fairly light read...very transparent and enjoyable. The main character shares her thoughts and feelings through a sort of journal - an adventure through love, renovation, and cooking. Mayes makes you want to travel to Tuscany. Fans of Eat, Pray, Love will love this one. ( )

At 66 pages in, I'm throwing in the towel.

Somewhere around the age of 22 or 23, I decided I was done with library books. Now, don't get me wrong, I love and appreciate libraries. I became a reader because of access to wonderful libraries. But, as an adult, I'm OCD enough not to enjoy the concept of library books. Wondering how many people read them while on the toilet, encountering books that smelled like ash trays, finding potato chip crumbs wedged between pages 32 and 33, encountering a sticky cover, or, dear God, whose hair is that?!!?--these are all things that would give me a nervous twitch for days. Add to that a county library that seemed unaware of the existence of authors other than Nicholas Sparks, Norah Roberts, James Patterson, and John Grisham, well, the choice was clear. I had to buy my own books.

The thing is, I was so punchdrunk giddy with the idea of buying my own books and not being limited to what was on the library shelves that I was pretty damn bad at it in the beginning. I bought anything and everything that struck my fancy. Part of this was also because I was willing to see if I was the kind of person who would like these books that I didn't have access to previously. A book about a woman moving to sun-drenched Italy and finding herself? Why not? Maybe I'm the kind of person who could like that. My shelves are still filled with secret shames I acquired in those heady days of biblio-freedom.

Let's just say that, today, I am not the kind of person who would ever pick this book up.

Under the Tuscan Sun is not a bad book. It's just not a me book. As far as I can tell, here is the basic premise:

1) Frances and Ed search all of Italy for the perfect summer house and have terrible trouble finding the place that's meant for them (talk about rich people problems, eh?)
2) Frances and Ed buy the house that speaks to them--and apparently the house is saying, "Freeze! Gimme all your money and no one gets hurt!" Because this house needs some serious work.
3) Frances and Ed perpetually need or get permits, contracts, money wires, and estimates for the bajillion and one things that need to be fixed. Every time the expense is exorbitant, but, before one can feel sorry for them, they scrape together the money needed with seemingly minimal effort. It's kind of like the movie The Money Pit with Tom Hanks and Shelly Long--only this time I was kind of rooting for the house.
4) Frances and Ed make a quaint little discovery on their property! Isn't Italy wonderful!
5) Something else goes wrong with the house. (Stick it to 'em, house!)
6) Frances cooks something. It's always Italian. It always has fresh ingredients. It is always fabulous.

It reads like a well-written, but repetitive and ultimately uninteresting diary.

Now, again, I did not finish reading the book, but skimmed through it enough to feel fairly assured that nothing new was ever going to happen. Other reviews reaffirmed this belief, so I do not feel compelled to read further. Had this been a travel article, I probably would have been intrigued but I just can't do another 240 pages of this. And so, Under the Tuscan Sun, ciao! I'm off to sunnier literary climes.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder ( )

After many years vacationing in Italy, Frances Mayes and her--husband? I don't think that's ever clarified--decide to buy a home in Tuscany. They search for a while, but nothing really calls to them. Then they stumble upon a home called Bramasole in the town of Cortona. It's a wreck, but they can't get it out of their heads. They go over and over all the reasons that they shouldn't buy it. And then they follow their hearts and move in and get to work.

First of all, I just need to say that this book has little in common with the movie except for the title. As she kept writing about "our house" and "our money," I kept looking back to see if I was missing something. She's buying the house with someone? And not just anyone, but a significant other? This was supposed to be about remodeling a house in Tuscany and romance with handsome Italians! What happened here?!?

Still, I enjoyed it, even more than the movie. So what if there aren't any romances with Italian men? I got to read beautiful descriptions that left me feeling as if I had just soaked in the heat of a Tuscan August, and left me feeling as if I really had been living life at a slower pace. Mayes is a very evocative writer and I was lost in the Tuscan countryside almost immediately. I didn't envy them the work they were doing, but I loved reading about the connection she was making with the house, the previous owners, and the roots she was growing. She refers often to the nonna that she imagines previously lived in the house, and wonders what she would think of the changes they are making and the food they are cooking. The nonna becomes something of a benevolent guardian, bestowing happiness and calm on all who enter.

The owners need that calm at times as they navigate the Italian method of renovating. Contractors they hire get sick, the replacement ones don't show up when they say they will, nothing is as easy as it seems, and fixing one problem seems to uncover ten more. Well, now that I think about it, that's probably a description of renovations the world over!

I enjoyed the pace of life that she fell into living in Tuscany. They strolled into town and loved to watch the evening passagietta, or stroll, when everyone who possibly can is out "meeting and greeting" in the dreamy twilights. I loved the way that life in Tuscany still seems to be so connected to the seasons. Your meals are actually planned around what's in season in your area and if you didn't grow the produce yourself, you probably just bought it from a farmer who picked it early that morning or the day before.

There's a tiny part of me that is tempted to place this on my Southern lit shelf, because Mayes is a Georgia girl and she frequently compares her life growing up in the South to the life she is living in Tuscany. Both cultures seem to be a little resistant to change, there's a strong sense of history and connection to the land, families have known families forever (well, maybe not quite as long in the South, but you know what I mean). "Southerners have a gene, as yet undetected in the DNA spirals, that causes them to believe that place is fate. Where you are is who you are." The Italians she meets seem to have that same bit of DNA.

One of my favorite chapters is entitled "Turning Italian." I love the first part when she writes about Ed and how she's watched him slowly change as they live in Italy. Starting as a tea drinker, he's learned to love syrupy-sweet espresso. He's learned to love the land and constantly nourishes it. But my favorite bit is how he's taken to Italian driving. "Most travellers here feel that driving in Rome qualifies as an experience that can be added to one's vita, that everyday autostrada trips are examinations in courage and that the Amalfi coast drive is a definition of hell." We spent two weeks in Italy in 2008 and I still have not gotten over the experience. Now, if we vacation somewhere that we can't drive to, we learn to navigate the public transportation or we walk. My husband has been grounded. He took a little too well to the utter chaos of Italian driving. I have a story that I love to tell, but let's just say that trying to find our way back to the rental car garage in Florence left me a quivering, screeching mass of nerves, cussing my husband for all he was worth. I don't cuss my husband. We barely even fight. That's how bad it was. So I laughed as I read the author's experiences and tried not to have flashbacks of driving the wrong way down a stretch of road in Rome with a barricade on one side of us and buildings on the other. *Shudder* Luckily for my husband, that was the taxi driver. I might have been driven to bloodshed if I had known the driver at all. But then again, bloodshed would have required letting go of the "chicken stick" I left my fingerprints in.

I wasn't quite as thrilled that she wrote so much about food. I'm not a foodie; I'm probably one of the pickiest adult eaters you will ever meet. So her loving descriptions of how to prepare rabbit or veal or wild boar were lost on me. I did still read every word, mostly for the small personal observations she worked in. So props to the author for getting me to read recipes that don't involve sugar!

I recommend this to armchair travelers, and those who enjoy thoughtful, beautifully written memoirs. ( )

This is really lovely. I wish I'd read it in the dead of winter, when the images of olive trees and roses and trattorias would have been even more comforting, but it was still a nice read on a cold autumn day.

I did think she could have done without the meandering reverie at the end, though. ( )