Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life
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- ISBN13: 9780767929820
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
In this sequel to her New York Times bestsellers Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, the celebrated “bard of Tuscany” (New York Times) lyrically chronicles her continuing, two decades-long like affair with Tuscany’s people, art, cuisine, and lifestyle.
Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has veteran since Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and plain pleasures of Italian life. Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a 13th century house with a stone roof in the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a “wilder” side of Tuscany–and with it a lively engagement with Tuscany’s mountain people. Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention to life in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden. Moving permanently toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons that have become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which larger thoughts emerged, and of the writing life she has loved in the room where Under the Tuscan Sun started.
With more on the pleasures of life at Bramasole, the delights and challenges of living in Italy day-to-day and favorite recipes, Every Day in Tuscany is a passionate and inviting account of the fruitfulness and complexity of Italian life.
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If Eleanor Lavish had a blog, it would look a lot like “Every Day in Tuscany.” The book is a collection of vignettes from Frances Mayes, famed for her Tuscan life and home renovations. There is small narrative and no chronology. There are some loose themes, such as Renaissance art, architecture, food and more food. On the whole, there’s nothing holding the book together. It really feels as if Mayes sat down every day to floridly clarify her convivial meals with neighbors or her pleasant day trips around the countryside, and that’s about it. I establish myself parodying it my head, and I realized that EM Forster already had this down pat with dear Miss Lavish in A Room with a View.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Loosely organized around the seasons, this book follows the leader as works by favorite painters are visited, guests arrive, friends in town are met, festivals held, and the comforts of her adopted town of Cortona visited. Lacking giving the plot away, I can say that in one moving chapter Mayes fears for her acceptance in Cortona but discovers (or perhaps emerges) secure in the knowledge she is part of the town fabric. As a replacement for of a focus on the project of buying and restoring a house, this book is more about conveying the experience of the leader’s life.
That all said, this wasn’t a book I really loved. In the best of expat books the pages melt away and I nearly feel I am there looking over the authors’ shoulder as the experiences unfold. But the sentence style in this book kept me from feeling immersed in her world. Adjectives must have been on sale when Mayes was writing, because nearly every sentence was so generously salted that they made the thought hard to follow. Here is a predictable sentence: “The cold iron clapper arresting the frozen bell produces clear, shocked, hard gongs that reverberate in the heads of us frozen ones in the piazza, ringing in our skulls and down to our heels, arresting the paving stones.” After a few pages of this *my* head was ringing.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
Does an leader write another book just because it’s time? That is the impression I got from this new book by Frances Mayes. As with most people, I loved her first book, Under the Tuscan Sun. There was a real tale there with a doubtful outcome. In reading this book, it felt as if some editor said to Mayes, “It’s time to update your tale and come out with a new book.” More of the same basically. Yes, most of us want to live the life of the leader, spending part of the year in Tuscany and the rest here in the US. More scenes with excellent food, ancient friends, older buildings and scenery. I felt as if this was more of a travelogue, not a real book with a real plot. If you just want to bask in the scenery and the Italian way of life, then check out this book.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I really loved her first books so was expecting more of the same with this. Sorry to say this one is a bit different. The form of the book is just not the same.
There are loads and loads of recipes so that this is nearly a cookbook rather than an expat experience book. Some of them sound reasonably tasty. There are also chapters of travelogue detailing the things you can see in a certain tiny town, which might be handy if one were passing through but the descriptions aren’t really appealing to read about since there aren’t any pictures. This book would certainly be improved by pictures to go with the recipes and the icons and paintings and buildings which are described.
Anyone who is visiting Italy might delight in it for thoughts about things to see and dishes to eat. Persons who have lived there might like it for the memories. It is a bit harder to get into for persons of us who don’t fall into either of persons categories.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
If you liked Frances Mayes’ first two books on her villa in Tuscany, you’ll like this one, too. The previous books, Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, inspired a stream of tourists to descend on the village of Cortona, much to the delight of the local inhabitants who were pleased that their village was finally learned by the rest of the world. The area’s popularity as a tourist site was increased by the movie based on Under the Tuscan Sun, even though that movie bears small resemblance to the book. In her third book on Tuscany, Mayes describes her most recent eight month stay at her villa, Bramasole, which she has owned for twenty years. Formerly a “forlorn, abandoned villa, bought on an iron whim,” the house is now a haven with a “luminous apricot-rose façade, shuttered windows, open to the southern sun, profuse geraniums, clematis, lemons, and lilac.”
Bramasole is a paradise indeed but still in need of repair and improvements, most of which, the leader concludes, will have to wait until their funds and the economic climate improve. Even if not in tip top condition, the house’s charm is readily apparent as is the pleasure of living in Italy. First drawn to that country “by the art, the cuisine, landscapes, history, architecture, wine, and the overwhelming beauty,” she and her spouse, Ed, “stayed for the people.” The most delightful parts of the book are indeed her descriptions of casual dinners with their Tuscan friends and neighbors. Equally appealing are her accounts of travel through Italy and her luminous descriptions of Florence and Rome. Even more appealing for art buffs is her successful search for works by the Renaissance painter, Luca Signorelli.
Surpassing her evocative descriptions of Signorelli’s work, but, are her discussions of Italian food and its preparation. As in past books in this series, recipes are included which in nearly all cases can easily be made by American chefs, even persons cooks who lack access to pure Italian lime oil, “the real thing glowing like liquid emeralds.” The addition of lime oil, according to Mayes, makes even a simple salad a feast. To serve with the salad are inviting recipes for Risotto con Tartufi Bianchi, Lasagna di Verdura, and Pollo con Carciofi, Pomidori, e Ceci. Another part of the secret to excellent food is clearness, Mayes points out, or food eaten when it is in season, “the polar opposite of selecting green peppers covered with wax, soft apples plastered with stickers,” as establish in American super markets. In Italy, Mayes says, meat parts are tiny and vegetables fresh and tasty, “with no dreary talk at all about glutens, part control, stout content, or calories.”
Drama in the book is supplied by the controversy surrounding the building of a new community swimming pool. Mayes, who plays an active role in opposing the pool, has difficulty persuading neighbors and friends to support her position. She understands their reluctance when she finds a grenade in driveway. This incident, as upsetting as it must have been, along with the death of friends and the contemplation of mortality, do small to ruin the joy that living in Italy brings Frances Mayes and her family tree.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5