Customer Reviews

Under the Tuscan Sun

5 star:		(118)
4 star:		(76)
3 star:		(43)
2 star:		(44)
1 star:		(73)

 

 

The reader-reviewers from Pennsylvania and Cambridge (above) reflect my impressions exactly. If you want to get to know Italians and Italy (short of spending a very long time there), read Tim Parks, Barbara Grizzutti Harrison, E. M. Forster. If you want recipes, read Marcella Hazen. If you want to read a really delightful travel memoir, read At Home in France, by Anne Barry.

I found this book tedious. Perhaps more work should have been done rather than simply copy the author's scrapbook memoirs into book form. Not enough care was taken in the organization of the text. In addition, the workers and their names, the contractors, those that did the work, and those that applied for the work, they're ALL there and are taking up too much space and time for no reason. Some are such unnecessary characters. So a contractor seemed to be charming, but she didn't hire him... I feel like the author would list everyone she met in the street if she only had their names in her scrapbook. Why was this book on the bestseller lists?

Even if you never plan to visit Tuscany, it is worthwhile to saturate yourself in Tuscan sunshine, inhale the aromas of Italian meals and feel the heartbeat of the countryside by reading this book. Mayes' words are so evocative that the scenes she describes transport you from your armchair to Tuscany immediately.
I put off reading this for quite a while thinking it must surely be overhyped. I'm glad I got past that and allowed myself the pleasure of seeing Tuscany through Frances Mayes' eyes.
I think some of the negative reviews on Amazon carry overtones of jealousy. Sure we would all love to have the funds to have a second home in a scenic spot on the planet. Wouldn't we enjoy having the summer off to indulge ourselves playing lord of the manor? I sure would, but reading her book gave me the chance to experience it vicariously and I thank her for that.

The content of this is very good - but don't read it when you are travelling along empty stretches of highways and you are hungry! It's torture! I have read the first in this series -Under the Tuscan Sun and listened to the audio of In Tuscany, read by the author. I think another reviewer commented that F. Mayes obviously does not speak Italian. Well, I'm not sure whether she does or doesn't but I can certify that she has absolutely no Italian accent. Not a shred. I found that the audio was not as appealing as it might have been had it been read by someone else with a better acting voice and a facility for an Italian accent for the Italian phrases.

I, like many other readers, was put off by the author's flippancy at spending money. The book was full of complaining about the costs of extreme renovations and their inconviences. I was also quite irritated when the author insinuates those that try to get a crash course in Europe, i.e. those who CAN'T afford an Italian farm house and the ability to spend 3-4 months away from there domestic jobs, are inferior to people like herself. Additionally, I found her writing to be rather unstructured. Perhaps, I would have enjoyed this more if it had been written by a poor, stuggling graduate student sleeping in hostels and taking odd jobs.

Frances Mayes has written a beautiful memoir about her home in Tuscany. Along with Mayes you experience all of the crazy unsettling ups and downs of purchasing a home abroad and attempting to renovate it on American time.

Both humerous and faithful to Tuscan life this book inspires new life, new dreams and new hope even in the deadest of hearts. Mayes will leave you hungry physically and emotionally for a life well lived. She introduces characters who adapt to the whims of an American woman with no idea of how Tuscan life really works until she becomes absorbed in her new life and home.

The book is FAR better than the movie and the recipes included will leave your taste buds in heaven. I recommend fresh air, a sip of Tuscan wine, good cheese, olive oil, and a dinner of sage and butter pasta and I believe you will melt into this book like I did.

At least Frances Mayes had some ostensible reason for being in Italy -- she was using American dollars to buy an Italian house, thereby doing her part to drive up the cost of Italian real estate to the point that ordinary Italians can't afford to buy a house in their own country.

So Frances Mayes is not a "tourist" or a "foreigner" she reminds us repeatedly -- she is now an Italian resident. Nevermind that she doesn't speak Italian beyond a few words and Berlitz-style phrases; Mayes carefully cultivates the perception among her readers that she does understand Italian. The fact is that if she'd had a real conversation in Italian, she would have recorded it. Instead she tries to analyze random Italians on the street based on their appearance and occasional gestures.

Her social commentary on Italy is thereby reduced to conversations with fellow expats and her glimpses of Italians in public life, such as watching people in the street or purchasing things in the store. In the store, she goes so far as to request the price for a brother, not the price for a foreigner. She knowingly insinuates that the shopkeeper is going to charge her more, then pretends she deserves a discount because she has the means to buy a villa and spend half the year renovating it (rather than engaged in other meaningful employment).

In fact, I own this book and open it at least once every two months. I love it. Naive American Goes Native in Tuscany. Frances Mayes could not have done a better parody of herself if she'd tried.

Anyone planning to visit Cortona would do better to read Amanda Craig's novel, Love in Idleness, which not only has the advantage of being funny but is infinitely better-written. Frances Mayes's autobiographical account of how she bought a decaying farmhouse in Tuscany is pleasant enough, and her affection for the landscape the the food described pretty well but there is no structure to her story, and the whole thing viewed through such rose-tinted spectacles I felt embarrassed.

I loved the gentle, meandering style of this book. It is SO much better than the movie. If I were Frances Mayes, I would have some fairly vehement issues about what the screenwriter did with the story.

By the end of the book (written in a very chatty and informal style) you feel like you know Frances and Ed and all their neighbors. In fact, you feel like she's been telling you this whole story over a glass of wine or two or three while sitting with your feet up all afternoon in the shady part of the piazza.

As a great fan of Peter Mayle and Susan Hermann Loomis, a friend bought me this book, and I tried reading through it, but got really sick of "this didnt happen, so I cried" so I've never finished it. Loomis does the same thing in En Rue Tatin (buy a house in a foreign country, remodel it, and chronicle the event), but she makes a positive spin on it, MUCH more pleasant to read. No fault with the recipes, tho I've not tried any of them.