Frances Mayes

This book was a terrible disappointment. I generally love Mayes' writing but found her rather insufferable in this selection. Much duller than her other books, it also shows a fairly nasty side of Mayes that I didn't like. Throughout the book she goes on rants about how things aren't up to her standards, leaving rental homes that had already been paid for because of tacky decor or because it was closer to a busy road than she would like. On top of that, and more grating to me was her show more constant berating of other people she encountered. She and Ed would giggle over some woman's choice of attire, this one being so out of fashion, that one looking like a sofa. The descriptions of overweight people was particularly galling. Describing one mother as an "albino hippopotamus" and depicting in detail her rolls and bulges because she dared to wear a white bathing suit in public - how dare she! There was one endearing chapter in which they visit Fez (although Ed was sick throughout this visit so perhaps without an audience to share her Mean Girl giggles with, she's less obnoxious). Unfortunately the Fez chapter was a mere 30 pages of 417. Not nearly enough to save the book from itself. I come away from this one really displeased with the author. I won't be reading more of her work. show less

My favorite thing about this book was that I felt no urgency to finish it; I could enjoy it the same way I would a lazy summer day. And while I was drifting through passages on house restoration and Italian cooking and Italian experiences that made me envious, I'd come across nuggets of wisdom I could just picture an eager class of college students discussing from every angle and viewpoint.

It seems all the more appropriate that I picked up this book on a whim at a used bookstore, that the show more bookstore owner told me it was one of her favorite books, that the previous owner left notes on the margins and underlined passages in freakishly straight lines. This book was just a lovely experience all around, one that didn't need to be rushed. show less

Frances Mayes rocketed to fame with her book Under the Tuscan Sun that can rightly be categorized as lifestyle pornography for middle-aged women. After mining this topic for years, she has now turned to her home turf, the American South, in a memoir that describes her southern Gothic childhood complete with a drunken and abusive father, a beautiful but disturbed mother, the beloved family retainer and grandparents who are actually called Daddy Jack, Big Momma and Big Daddy like characters show more out of a Tennessee Williams play.

Frances, the family after thought, is bright, but pretty insufferable - willful an opinionated. Her parents tolerate her eccentricities since his is the South and the only important thing in life is outward appearances. Nightly she hears the battles between her parents, but by day all is normal - her father helping to run the family mill and her mother occupying her time with bridge and the garden club. Frances' job is to grow up to be a model Southern woman and marry into a good family.

While she is a cosseted member of her communities privileged class in her small town, her life is very constricted. Boyfriends need to come from "good families," options for college are restricted to the South, and no girl from a good family would ever have a summer job.

After her father dies from an unexplained illness, that one assumes is cancer, Frances and her mother rely on her paternal grandfather, Daddy Jack, for money that he doles out with miles of strings attached to each check. Frances copes by spending as much time as possible away from home on school vacations, while her mother dives deeper and deeper into a gin bottle.

Eventually Frances graduates from college, marries what appears to be a nice guy and moves to California. Years later, while on a book tour, she finds herself in Oxford, Mississippi and the lure of her roots pulls her back home. But not home exactly. Instead of the red dirt of a small Georgia town, she lands in a enclave of rich artists near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a university community full of those Yankees that her Daddy Jack warned her about years ago. From this prospective she can wax eloquently about how while "you can still see the Stars and Bars flying over a trailer in the woods.....still hear an occasional slur from someone who doesn't have the sense to see you don't agree....mostly the good inheritance of southern manners in both races prevail." As someone who lives in a different South, where things aren't so polite, I'd like to point out that she is largely living in fantasyland.

Ms. Mayes is an evocative writer, spinning out beautiful prose. I just wish it was more honest. show less

Your enjoyment of this book will largely depend on how much you like the things Frances Mayes likes -- food, flowers and antiquities, to name a few. The locales she and her husband visit are varied, but she spends most of her words for those interests. Very much a diary, including friends in the telling, it's theme is quite loose, finding yourself in other places. Unlike her previous works, she shows a nasty side here, with unkind (and unnecessary) comments about the passengers on a cruise show more she took. show less