Customer Reviews

Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(32)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I am a fan of Frances Mayes first book, "Under the Tuscan Sun" and thought I would really enjoy this book, but I was rather disappointed and had a lot of mixed feelings about it. The things I liked about her writing style is that she sometimes writes with a kind of flourish, lyrical and almost poetic in her descriptions. But I didn't like that this book read more like a blog more than a story of her life there. Sometimes it felt like a lot of random thoughts that didn't have much of a direction. It had a "thrown together" feel. Rather than feeling involved in the book like I did with her first one, I found it difficult to concentrate on it. It took me weeks to get through and I actually started and finished a couple other books while I was reading it.

I liked the recipes that were included and loved the idea of the Italians eating fresh and seasonally available foods. I liked her description of people eating and enjoying life rather than over analyzing everything they put in their mouths like many of us do here. She had many descriptions of simple meals that went on for hours, of food being a celebration rather than just a means of nourishment. This she conveyed well.

What I didn't like was her description of "ex-pats" and tourists in Italy which came off as being condescending. Although she has owned a home there for many years, from what I've read she lives both there and in the U.S. during different parts of the year and it seems likely that the Italians would put her in that same "ex-pat" category. The book reads like an American living in Italy not as someone who is really a part of the community.

I thought the long discussions of her trips around the country to see the art of Luca Signorelli were just plain tedious. Perhaps including photos of his works would have made it more interesting but her descriptions weren't enough to hold my interest and instead of drawing me in, my mind just wandered. I would rather have read more about the different towns, many of which I've visited, and gotten more of an insider's view rather than the tourist's view that she provided.

I loved her descriptions of her grandson Willie's experiences when he came to visit. You could feel her love for him in her writing and had an idea of his amazement with Italy as seen through a child's eyes. I could also feel her sense of loss when his vacation was over and he had to leave.

If I could have given the book 2 ½ stars, that would have been my rating, but giving the book the benefit of the doubt I'm giving it 3. I really wanted to like this book more than I did.

Almost twenty years ago, the publication of Frances Mayes' "Under the Tuscan Sun" signaled the dawn of a new era in the perennial love affair between American travelers and all things Tuscan. This month, she continues her string of fascinating memoirs with "Every Day in Tuscany - Seasons of An Italian Life."

I am one of those Americans who has fallen under the spell of Tuscany - Firenze, Siena, Chianti, the Ponte Vecchio, the three versions of Michelangelo's David that can be found within Florence, the Duoma, the Uffizi. I absorbed the sights, sounds and flavors of this book with great gusto. If, after reading Mayes' latest offering, you are not tempted to book a trip to Italy this summer, then I will be surprised.

The structure of this latest memoir is set between the bookends of Mayes' arrival with her poet husband, Ed, in Cortona for their annual season in Tuscany at her beloved villa of Bramasole and their departure for their winter home in North Carolina. In her chronicling of the intervening months, she leads her readers down a leisurely path that introduces them to some of the colorful characters in town, her life-embracing neighbors, the kitchens of some of the best cooks in the world, and the vineyards and olive groves of the surrounding hillside towns.

Another thread that weaves together her meandering narratives is her love for the paintings of Luca Signorelli. She and Ed visit many Tuscan towns to have another look at some of her favorite Signorelli paintings and frescoes. Spicing up the pages of each chapter are recipes that Mayes has gleaned from treasured Italian friends, and words and phrases from the colorful Italian language. Her use of these phrases is wonderfully instructive, rather than intrusive.

She describes in loving detail some wonderful places I look forward to visiting - townsal like Urbino, Citta di Castello, Sansepolchro, Umbertide, Perugia.

When she first made the investment in the crumbling Bramasole, Mayes was regrouping after a divorce. The town folks embraced her - but cautiously. Along the way, there have been occasional indications that she was still viewed as an outsider. But the anecdotes she shares in this latest memoir make it clear that as a byproduct of her investment in the community of Cortona - and in her serving an evangelist for the ethos and frame of mind that is Tuscany - the Tuscans have now embraced her wholeheartedly as a valued member of the community and family. She describes the subtle growth and evolution of her own mind set about Tuscany - its people, its foods, its wines, its history, its joys and challenges.

This book is a total delight - like a warm and comforting taste of freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil. I encourage you to read it if you love Tuscany - or are open to being seduced by its multi-sensory beauty and charming homeliness.

Enjoy.

Abbondanza!

Al

Many people will adore this book. Those people are attracted by Mayes previous books; they fell in love with them, and dream of having her life. This book is a voyeuristic sequel to the first two; the adoring reader can now live out the fantasy of 'every day' of Frances Mayes' life in Tuscany.

For the uninitiated or the less star struck, this book is the equivalent of a rambling blog, random thoughts, observations, and events that Frances Mayes has strewn together.

Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life, tries to be many things. The book tries hard to be a story, a travel guide, a recounting of the author's personal trials and tribulations, a cook book, an Italian language course, and art history. Sadly it doesn't do a particularly good job at any of these tasks. It even fails at recounting the passage of time and seasons.

The title hints at a romantic view of life in utopian small town Italy. I expected some insight into Italian life and culture, or at least a small thread of story to weave that fabric of all things Italian. Instead the book is a rambling series of paragraphs disconnected from one another. Interesting stories are started and never finished. People come and go, flow in and out of the book for no apparent reason, except that Frances Mayes met them and finds them interesting for a moment. Italian artists, towns, and areas are all mentioned with the expectation that the reader knows these things, or that they are simply common knowledge. Recipes are presented willy nilly, some are fabulous, some are impossible to make. At first the recipes are described in incredible detail, gradually they become vague descriptions, and then finally they devolve into restaurant menus. The book attempts to be an Italian language course, Ms. Mayes has an annoying habit of including Italian phrases in italics and then translating them into English after a comma. This artifact is cute early in the book, but becomes annoying as the book wears on.

The great news for the Mayes fan, she uses so many towns and street names, the rabid fan can actually follow her everyday life around central and northern Italy. They can probably even locate the carefully built and heated pizza oven in her backyard, or the enormous rock table lovingly built during the bocce terrain construction, or the man wearing the wife beater t-shirt near the tranquil piazza, or the apartment floor that looks like a yacht deck in Portofino, or some minute detail of a painting by Signorelli. All these details were mentioned in the book, but none were given context, or story, or a life that had any meaning to me. They were random things that I was supposed to understand and adore.

The book turned a particularly bad corner for me during a diatribe about `ex-pats,' or foreign tourists invading the private world of Frances Mayes and her husband Ed. She describes how the `ex-pats' arrive, don't speak Italian but insist on speaking loudly in English, don't work hard with their own hands, spend too much money, and have no Italian friends. Based on what Ms. Mayes has written in this book it is very difficult to swallow her disdain for tourists. She and her husband purchased two houses that no Italian would buy. They then hired people to do the renovation. Her Italian friends mostly appear to be people with something to sell to her, from the wine merchant to the various chefs. She may well speak Italian, and that seems to be the only difference between her and the tourists. Frances Mayes has exactly one job, to be entertained every day.

Good literature engages my imagination, transports me to another place, and excites me to read every word the author has written. Very subtly, it parades the questions in front of me without answering those questions. This book is very far from that type of literature. Instead this book is many pages of the musings of a ne'er do well that is on eternal vacation. I was never engaged even when she described places I know well.

Tsk, Tsk, Tsk! In Frances Mayes new book, "Every Day in Tuscany", she has become the quintessential "Ugly American". Her foot-stamping, petition-signing tantrum over the building of a swimming pool for the locals within sight of her view from the terrace of Bramasole left me with a feeling of deep embarassment. She is the sort of American I shy away from when I go to Europe. She has become a self-absorbed ex-pat and I fear the Tuscan sun has set on her novels for me forever. I'm so glad I read "Every Day in Tuscany" in the book store and did not spend my good American dollars on a book that was such a huge disappointment. I relished every word of "Under the Tuscan Sun" but Frances needs to move on. I have.

I loved Under the Tuscan Sun. I can still remember the delight I felt, how connected I felt reading the beautiful descriptions that transported me to Italy. Unfortunately, Frances Mayes's latest book does not have the same heart.

As other reviewers have noted, this book is one description after another of Mayes's frankly charmed life living in Italy with all the money and free time to spare to travel around the country, meet rich people, and eat delicious meals served by others to her and her family. In one chapter, for example, we read about how she goes to her second Italian home (close to her original home) complete with pool & outdoor pizza kitchen where yet another servant/friend comes to help make the pizzas while Mayes can host a party.

The writing in Every Day in Tuscany is often quite beautiful, and I loved when Mayes writes about observing the natural world, but I simply couldn't relate to the obvious wealth that surrounds Mayes, now. She is living a fairytale life in Italy. There is nothing in this book to ground it in ordinary life--no worries about bills, no worries about making a living, no hands-on anything being done by Mayes or anyone else in her family--and it ultimately felt empty. I didn't even finish the book, and I felt sad about that. I wish Mayes had more humility about her life and that the humility was more apparent in her writing.

I received this uncorrected proof from the Amazon Vine program, and was looking forward to a book like Under the Tuscan Sun. However, in the 20 years since Frances Mayes bought Bramasole, she has become one of those expats who have lived somewhere long enough to imagine they are "native" and somehow superior to the tourists who visit. I was surprised when I began reading this book to realize that the innocence and sense of wonder from the first book was gone, and that she has basically a shallow life of gazing at paintings and attending five hour feasts with influential locals who have taken her into the bosom of their families.

Things I liked about her book:

- She still has a very colorful and visual way of describing the towns, food, gardens, and people of Tuscany. Her book is written to loosely follow the seasons, from the time they arrive in spring from the USA to when they shutter up the house and return to the USA in winter. One can almost smell the blooming flowers and dusty hot streets of Cortona from her writing.

- She included many recipes for authentic Italian food, several of which which I plan to try.

- I was pleased to read that so many Italians keep backyard orchards, gardens, rabbits and chickens. This is how "slow food" is meant to be - locally raised, freshly harvested and prepared at home. Our American fast food diet could learn a lot from this lifestyle.

- She obviously loves her grandson very much, and enjoys seeing the world through his eyes.

Things I disliked about her book:

- Luca Signorelli, the Renaissance painter, is mentioned on just about every page. At one point I felt like reminding the author that she has a husband already, and that Luca has been dead for 400 years. Try to move on.

- Wine, wine, wine. I know it's an important part of Italian cuisine, but she goes way overboard on descriptions of wine at every meal. She tosses around the name, vintage and vintner of every wine she comes across as if anyone but a Tuscan would recognize them.

- She is somewhat pretentious in describing how she and her husband are invited to wine tastings at private vineyards, given use of private residences on their travels, and are dear friends of all the best people in town. She devoted a whole chapter to the time she was introduced to Robert Redford at some artsy fete and came to call him Bob.

- Mayes and her husband evidently do nothing except go to dinner parties, attend the opera and theater, stay in quaint little hotels in resort towns, pick herbs and vegetables from their garden (tended by a gardener), gaze at paintings in museums, meet friends for coffee in the piazza, and plan what to eat at the next meal.

- She considers herself a (celebrity) resident of Cortona, and yet not once does she mention doing any kind of community service or donating to local charities. Is there no orphanage, old age home or soup kitchen that could use some help? With her connections and money, she could do a lot of good. I guess that would interrupt her dinner party schedule.

- She mentions throughout the book that they have hired hands to tend the garden and orchard, to do landscaping and house repairs, and a woman to help cook and clean inside. I'm not sure how she can feel such a soul connection to Bramasole when she never gets her hands dirty taking care of it.

- One of her French expat friends from the early years in Cortona dies, and she laments being out of touch with him for so many years. She goes to the cemetery and roams around looking for his grave (while talking about Signorelli, naturally), but doesn't find it. This one story was so telling to me. Had she not kept in touch with anyone from her early days, especially fellow expats? Nobody in town could tell her about his funeral or grave? Is she so immersed in being Tuscan that her old friends don't matter?

I probably would have bought this book since I loved her first one so much, but I would have been disappointed in it. I have lived all over the world and have enjoyed learning about different foods, cultures, languages and religions. I hope I never came across to any other expats or the locals the way Frances Mayes come across to me - rich, pretentious and shallow.

First off I would like to see this author expand horizons. Because the author has written on Tuscany before I expected there to be a lot of repetiveness in this book and there was. Also, I did not like the Blog-style of the book. I felt like it was something I have read before countless times. Travel books on Tuscany have become so excessive that most of the new books probably seem to be repetitive. Overall, I felt it was a dull and predictable book.

I agree with many of the reviewers that this book cannot touch Under The Tuscan Sun. Much of it is repetitive and extremely boring. The descriptions of visitng the Signorelli paintings are positively excruciating. I felt like I was slogging through the book to get to the end. However when I read on page 261 that her six year old grandson said "I can't see any more. If I see any more I will miss Rome too much." I was done with this book. What a bunch of b.s. She churned this one out without much thought at all. What a disappointment!!

Pat Murphy

This book is organized by season of the year, and is almost written as a diary. I enjoyed the formatting of it and I especially loved the recipes that she inserts after discussion of particular meals. If you enjoyed Under the Tuscan Sun I think you will really be moved by this intimate glimpse into Mayes's life. Her passion for Italy, art, food, and family is inspiring! She described her ex-husband with such fondness and gentleness that it took me a little off guard. It is so clear that she deeply values him and all of her life experiences because they have gotten her to where she is at that moment. To be honest, it was a little heavy on discussing her favorite artist Signorelli for me. I have to admit that I did quite a bit of skimming over these sections. Overall, this book was extremely pleasurable to read. Once I finished it I felt like I had taken a weekend trip to Italy!

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 little 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 describe her convivial meals with neighbors or her pleasant day trips around the countryside, and that's about it. I found 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.