Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy

This month’s book club pick was Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun, which natch made me want to go to Italy hasta pronto.

I was a tad skeptical, having seen bits and pieces of the movie and being severely underwhelmed. I wanted to like it; I enjoy Diane Lane as an actress, and how could I not also love a movie set in Italy, with all the food and scenery and handsome Italians in its favor?! However … it was not meant to be.

Thankfully, my initial inclinations about the book were unfounded. I honestly found the book to be … enchanting. The descriptions of the house restoration process; the foods; the wines – everything was drool-worthy.

The only aspect of the book I struggled with was Mayes’ description of a tour she and her show more husband Ed took through small-town Italy. I was overwhelmed with names! dates! wine they bought cases of to take home! It’s a blur – still.

But that didn’t hinder me from highlighting away and dreaming of recipes to try, from the simple pears and Gorgonzola cheese to the high-brow cherries steeped in Chianti. (Can’t wait to try that when cherries are in season here – only a couple months to go! I even bought a cherry pitter from Williams-Sonoma just for that recipe.)

Read it; enjoy; skip over the small-town Italy road trip; and start planning your next European Adventure. I know I am. 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 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.

I'm sad to say that it has finally happened. I've finally stumbled upon the one book that pales in comparison with the movie that was made about it. I picked up Under The Tuscan Sun last week at my local book exchange; it was hidden in the small biography section, and I was pleased to see the title; the movie is one of my favorites, and having never read the book, I imagined that I was in for a real treat. Instead of the lovely story of a woman's first trip to Italy right after her divorce, the spontaneous purchase of a villa, falling in love and finding heartbreak, the secondary love story between Polish boy and Italian neighbor, and the American friend coming to have her baby, I turned the pages and became more and more baffled and show more frustrated. Under the Tuscan Sun the movie and Under the Tuscan Sun the book can't possibly have anything in common outside of the most basic and briefest scenes; i.e. the little old man who brings flowers to the shrine [and even then, she writes that she meets him in the park one day early on, and he says hello to her]. The book encompasses the tale of Frances and her equally American boyfriend, of many, many years, both professors on the west coast, traveling around Italy every summer, and finally settling on a summer house to buy after having looked in earnest for over 5 years. It talks about the renovations and the markets and the endless, mind numbing trips around the country. There is no Italian stallion boyfriend. There is not an American girl coming to have a baby. The Polish boy is a 14 year old slacker JERK and, as far as the book details, he never meets much less falls in love with the Italian girl neighbor. The blond filmstar makes a brief appearance, but is nothing like the character in the movie. Halfway through the book, I felt sure I was going to throw it across the room if I had to read the word Etruscan once more. I say this as a person who is totally enamoured of Italy, art, and history; this book made me completely ambivalent through sheer force of repetition and walls of words trying to capture every mundane detail. With my eyes glossing over the endless prattle, what a nasty surprise to feel like I have been lied to rather than delighted. Instead of "based on a true story" at the begining of the movie, it should have said "we took a boring book and made magic happen, with only the most bare basis in reality." show less

There were parts of this book that I really liked. The descriptions of the food made me want to get into the kitchen and whip up some pasta (too bad my husband has celiac disease). I also loved the descriptions of the seasons with the different plants in bloom and food that was seasonal. I would have liked some pictures or floor plans of the house so I could understand what the place looked like when they bought it and what it turned out like. My friends who have seen the movie tell me it is nothing like the book so I don't know that seeing it would help. All in all this was an interesting book to read but I don't know that I would want to read any other by this author.

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 show more 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. show less

Reading this memoir of an American woman who buys and renovates a three-story Italian Villa with her husband, I can understand why so many love and so many others hate the book. I feel mixed myself. To understand how readers feel, let me quote you her description of their new Summer residence, just an hour away from Florence:

A dignified house near a Roman road, an Etruscan (Etruscan!) wall looming at the at the top of the hillside, a Medici fortress in sight, a view toward Monte Amiata, a passageway underground, one hundred and seventeen olive trees, twenty plums, and still uncounted apricot, almond, apple, and pear trees. Several figs seem to thrive near the wall. Beside the front steps there's a large hazelnut.... In front the two show more palm trees rising on either side of the front door make the house look as though it should be in Costa Rica or Tangier.

First, one imagines some are going to hate the woman and this book from sheer envy. Mayes describes a rarefied life-style that makes Martha Stewart sound very déclasse. Assuming you're not fabulously wealthy, you have to be willing to enter into this as a fantasy setting to savor, one where you kick off your Italian shoes, admire the antique fresco uncovered on your wall as you nibble on Gorgonzola, sip your house wine made from the grapes out back, lean in to smell the freshly cut roses from out front, and listen to Scarlatti being played on your piano by your guest.

Second, there's the style. Note the present tense of the quotation--that's used throughout. The author is described on the back cover as a poet, and the narrative is very lyrical, almost prose poetry. For some that will be part of the charm--others might find it purple or overwritten. I actually felt a bit mixed. I thought much of the writing quite beautiful, but the style didn't wear well. After a hundred pages of it I felt glutted, on sensory overloaded and finding it irresistible to skim. Part of that might be my fault for reading this page after page as if it were a novel. I suspect that like any rich food, this might fare better taken in small bites--such as one chapter a day.

I think the substance and style work together to enchant or repel depending on a reader's tastes. This isn't anything like the film of the same name. There's no story here, no romance. They renovate their villa and they cook and eat--a lot. (Over 20 pages of gourmet recipes such as "Pea and Shallot Bruschetta" are included.) Rather, this is a rather decadent paean to the senses. show less

This is one of those few books the beauty of which I just can’t over. Mayes’s attention to detail is thrillingly mouth-watering. Makes me want to drop everything and buy a house in Italy. It does wander a bit toward the end, but, all in all, this is darn near close to perfect.