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Loading... Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy (1996)by Frances Mayes
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I was assigned this book for a cre-writ retreat, and while I enjoyed Mayes' writing style and the premise of the book, I ended up not liking her at all! I think it was probably a lack of enough personal information (it's written in 1st person, after all) that made her seem ... flippant? I do love an heiress, and I'm kinda a snob myself, but I don't want to feel that from an author. ( ) I likely purchased this soon after I read Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, and it’s similar in content: ex-pat moves to a new country and describes the people, food, landscape, customs and home-restoration process there. But while I loved that Mayle regaled the reader, Mayes was pleasant but to-the-point. Here's what I wrote in 2008 about this read: "Loved it!! True story with recipes!! I think we should find ourselves a Tuscan villa to renovate with the help(?) of local tradesmen, and learn to cook the Tuscan way! Loved it so much, never wanted to get even close to the movie." Well, we never did do the villa thing, but did get to Tuscany finally in 2018 and have Umbria on the list for maybe 2023 or 2024.
It was with considerable baggage that I recently revisited "Under the Tuscan Sun" this year, on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, and discovered that my opinion of the book has grown ever so slightly more generous with age. This is not to say that I found the book free of flaws the second time around. For one, it contains virtually no narrative conflicts; each incident that could potentially cause tension gets resolved within paragraphs or, at most, a few pages. Will the villa’s previous owner sell to Frances and her partner, Ed? Yes, he will. Will a big pile of money needed to make the deal arrive by wire? Several paragraphs later, it does. Frances stubs her toe, to much consternation, and a few lines later Ed applies a Band-Aid... However I feel about Mayes and her privilege, and the marketing phenomenon that has flourished in her wake, there’s no denying that her prose brings Bramasole to life. When the workers begin to open up a wall between her living room and the kitchen, removing large stones, Mayes writes, “It’s the imagination that carries us through the stress of these projects. Soon we will be happy!” During a Christmas Day snowfall, while her daughter and a friend are visiting, she asks, “Is this much happiness allowed?” Is contained inHas the adaptationInspiredNotable Lists
Biography & Autobiography.
Travel.
Nonfiction.
HTML:#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The beloved memoir of self-discovery set against the spectacular Tuscan countryside that inspired the major motion picture starring Diane Lane—now in a twentieth-anniversary edition featuring a new afterword “This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy, loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one. But it’s so delicious, read it first yourself.”—USA Today For more Frances Mayes, including a tour of her now iconic Cortona home, Bramasole, watch PBS’s Dream of Italy: Tuscan Sun Special! More than twenty years ago, Frances Mayes—widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer—introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys—whether that be flying to a foreign country in search of themselves, savoring one of the book’s dozens of delicious seasonal recipes, or simply being transported by Mayes’s signature evocative, sensory language. Now with a new afterword from Frances Mayes, the twentieth-anniversary edition of Under the Tuscan Sun revisits the book’s most popular characters. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)945.5History and Geography Europe Italy and region TuscanyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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