Customer Reviews

A Garden in Lucca: Finding Paradise in Tuscany

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really loved this book. A nice variation on the 'foreigners move to exotic locale and meet charming locals' theme. It's much more than that, too. I nearly cried when I thought Paul and Gil were going thru with the sale......whew! Never thought I'd read a garden book, but as a fan of Tuscany, I had to pick this one up. Glad I did.

Paul Gervais captures the delights as well as the challenges of living in Italy -- and does so with splendidly engaging prose. Gervais has an exceptional talent for recalling conversations, as readers of his first book 'Exceptional People' will agree. My wife and I both loved this book, and we knew nothing before about gardens!

Paul Gervais has written a wonderful book. A book for everyone. Gardening lovers, gardeners, neophytes, everyone including those who have always been lazy with their garden. The story is just amazing. The extremely witty way of telling it and the incredible setting keep the reader glued to the book with a funny feeling. You actually realise you want to do the same thing Paul has done. You want to create your own garden, improve your little terrace or add a flower-bed to your plain-looking lawn. You will fall in love with the countryside. The author looks at Italy with an eye full of reverence, passion and excitement and he never fails to convey the humble feeling with which he approaches his work in his gardens. You'll love the book. Professionals will read it and smile and recognise some of the struggles to obtain what they wanted, people will learn something new. All will enjoy the story that lies behind the wonderful house and its gardens. It's the right book to dream with, find new ideas and have a great feeling.

Bravo! Bravo! Mr. Gervais on this colorful and artful journey in prose wonderfully construcuted. With his elegant manner of detail, humor, and eccentric characterization, this work brought light to a romantics soul. An intriguing & refreshingly natural explosion of a personal rebirth. Five revitalizing stars!

You might get the idea at first glance that this is yet another Provence/Tuscany retreat memoir complete with wide-eyed cross-cultural mishaps, boring renovations and banal recepies, but look again; This writer is bona fide, as he's lived near the old city of Lucca for nearly twenty years where he now cultivates the extensive gardens of his Renaissance hunting lodge. Missing here is the breathhless, shallow enchantment with all that's new and foreign, further tainted by a patronizing scrutiny of the locals and their quaint, imagined, cuteness. He doesen't bother us with the butcher, baker and the candlestick maker, or any shephed who happens to pass through his olive groves; he's gone beyond the obvious and facile here. His friends are those with whom he shares a passion for gardening. These characters come from all walks of life: they might be landed aristocrats or simple folks with a patch of ground, but they're all vibrantly portrayed, with enormous wit and affection. This is a book that lasts, with its generous mix of passion, irony and wonder, and its depths linger in my memory.

In A Garden In Lucca, Paul Gervais presents a delightful account of his transition into life in the most beautiful part of Italy. Moving from ignorance to expertise in the field of gardening, Mr. Gervais makes the reader a partner in his acquisition of new skills and knowledge.

The book also deals with the high and low drama of a possible sale of Mr. Gervais's 'Italian Paradise' as well as personal elements of the author's life. Even readers unfamiliar with the Latin names for plant species come to feel the passion Mr. Gervais has brought to his new life.

The book is a great read.

Paul Gervais is not Mathew Spender, nor is he Peter Mayle, nor is he Frances Mayes. Spender is an artist with a flair for description who fills his book about the life of an Englishman in Italy with all sorts of charming anecdotes about his Italian neighbors. Mayle may have initiated the recent round of books on the life of the well-heeled foreigner who moves to a sunnier and "older" part of Europe and rebuilds an "older" more archaic home and/or garden and in the process discovers the eccentric neighbors. Mayes has done an execllent job of continuing the writing and rebuilding trend with her books about the restoration of an older home she bought and inhabits part of the year in the Tuscan hills in-between-bouts as a tv cook or whatever it is she does back in SF to pay the bills (her books may bring in some revenue).

As a former addict of "This Old House" on public tv, and one who has struggled with the restoration of an antebellum home in the states (i.e. an old farm house my father owned--I was his "helper"), I occasionally read books about the restoration of big old houses and gardens and enjoy them because I am NOT doing the work. Reading about the travails of others as the struggle to build new lives in strange places is a comfortable arm chair pursuit. Occasionally, these authors become so famous they have to move away, though some of them return.

Paul Gervais' book is a sort-of "good read" although the serious gardener won't learn anything about gardening from it. If you're looking for inspiration about house restoration you would do better to watch "This Old House" on public tv. If you've never read Mayle or Mayes you will probably enjoy these writers a bit more. I laughed so hard when I read Mayle's first book that I cried and that experience is not to be missed by those who need a reading "lift" although by now most of the world has already read about Mayle's life in Provence.

In his book on life in Lucca, Gervais spends a bit of time discussing the work he and his partner Gil pursued restoring the house, the dependencies, and the grounds if their home, the Villa Massei in Massa Macinaia, a small town in the province of Lucca, Italy. He assumes a familiarity with Italy, Lucca, Italian architecture, gardens, history, etc. If you have a background adequate enough to follow what he is discussing, you may find the book inadequate, if not, you may become bored or lost or both. He seems to have written the book for his friends and acquaintenances who are already familiar with his sitution. The tone of the text is newsy -- as if he has penned a letter to the folks back home informing them about how things are progressing. I would have enjoyed Gervais' book a bit more if he had included some photographs, particularly of those gardens he visits that fall into the categor of "famous and private" and are off the beaten track.

I find myself under the ceaseless rain with no gardening to do and this book picked me up and prepared me for spring. The fact that this garden in in Italy makes the pleasure even more pronounced. A Joy to read and ponder.

Paul Gervais' second book is excellent, even topping his first book (Extraordinary People). A Garden In Lucca is a novel about life, told through a gardner's eyes. It is an inspiring memoir that makes you think about your own life and the pursuit of happiness.

I first read "A Garden in Lucca:Finding Paradise in Tuscany" when it was published. I purchased this copy for friends who recently traveled to Lucca. While there, they visited the Orto Botanico Comunale di Lucca and there, in the gift store, was this book. Only in a larger format with illustrations and in Italion. So if you're ever in the Botanical Garden in Orta, check it out!