Customer Reviews

The Reluctant Tuscan

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2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book works on several levels. First of all, it is a very amusing account of adjusting to life in a small Tuscan town. The author struggles with the language, the maddening Italian bureaucracy and the often perplexing social customs. His wife, having visited the area many times, was more familiar with the culture. For example, when bureaucratic red tape slowed progress on home repairs or on the completion of paperwork, she used two things that never failed to bring results: tears and mention of mother. She "faked" crying on several occasions to get her way. I can't say I blame her, although it did get kind of old after a while.

Nothing seemed to get done without food being involved either. Lots of food.

Another reason this book works is as a travel book. You will learn things here about Italy that you will never find in a Rick Steves' tourbook.

And finally, this book works because it is wickedly funny. An enjoyable read.

Phil Doran's dry humor is evident in this light-hearted romp under the Tuscan sun. The story sounds predictable with an American writer escaping to Italy impulsively buying a fixer-upper in the country. Sounds familiar? Sounds like the plot for Under the Tuscan Sun, only this version is from a man who has the knack for comedy. Doran is the writer and producer of the tv hit Wonder Years. The Reluctant Tuscan has the feel of Peter Mayle's travel diaries but with more story than diary. Would be great for a light summer read.

"Reluctant" and "Tuscan" are two words that might seem contradictory. After all, who wouldn't seize the chance to live in the celebrated Italian region famous for its vineyards, lush scenery, and charming villages? Well, Phil Doran, for one.

Doran's reluctant Tuscan odyssey begins with a phone call from his wife, Nancy, an artist who travels frequently to Italy. "I bought a house," she tells him as he sits in his office in their home in Los Angeles. A television scriptwriter, Doran has no intention of leaving Hollywood behind for life in the rural Italian village of Cambione. But he's no match for Nancy, who is determined to save her husband from his high-stress, workaholic lifestyle. In his fifties, he's viewed by the entertainment industry as "a relic from another age," yet he can't seem to let go of the job that has defined him for twenty-five years.

Doran heads to Tuscany where he finds more drama than anything he could have conjured up for the screen. The 300-year-old farmhouse he now owns is ramshackle at best, a true fixer-upper that needs extensive structural work and has neither an address nor a road leading to it. The previous owners have decided they want to reclaim the house, and they try all manner of ways to get the Dorans to sell it back, including fixing them with the "evil eye." And the whole town, it seems, knows about their plight and has an opinion to offer. Finally, after navigating endless layers of bureaucratic red tape, renovations on the house finally begin --- bringing with it a whole new set of challenges.

Part memoir and part travel narrative, THE RELUCTANT TUSCAN is about a quest to restore a house. But it's also about Doran's journey to restore his life and reconnect in his marriage. For armchair travelers, though, there is no shortage of exquisite descriptions of Tuscany --- an open-air concert in a hill town outside Florence, an olive harvest, and "some of the most serenely beautiful wine country in all of Chianti," where "tall, spindly cypress trees swayed in the wind, and from everywhere at once came the smell of sun-warmed earth and budding Sangiovese grapes."

A cast of colorful characters includes the witty, charming, and no-nonsense Nancy, who is nicknamed Rompicoglione for her persistence in getting things done (the verb rompere means "to break" and coglione is slang for testicles); Annamaria, a neighbor who gives them a baby goat as a housewarming present; Dino, their temporary landlord with a boisterous extended family and a wayward son; and Horn Dog, a lusty canine who more than earns his moniker.

THE RELUCTANT TUSCAN is laugh-out-loud funny. Whether it's learning the language, buying a car, compiling a list of "Ten Things I Hate About Tuscany," or trying to glean insight into the Italian way of life, Doran's powers of observation are trumped only by his ability to convey what he sees and experiences with clarity and humor. Pour a glass of Chianti and savor this intoxicating tale. You might not find your inner Italian, but you'll have an enjoyable time as Phil Doran tells you how he discovered his.

--- Reviewed by Shannon McKenna

Screenwriter Phil Duran's first book The Reluctant Tuscan is a laugh-out loud tale of a mid-life crisis unfolding in the Italian countryside.

His style is a sort of Erma Bombeck meets Woody Allen although there is an underlying love story between a husband and wife struggling to survive the pressures of a Hollywood marriage. We (you) feel as though we are eavesdropping on Phil's thoughts as he relates with total candor the absurdities of living as a cultural misfit in a country he both loves and hates. But there is a sweet side to Phil underneath the cynicism that gives this book an authenticity devoid of contrivance.

Quite simply this is one very funny book and a rare gift for the summer reader.

Book shelves bulge with stories by those who have sought health and happiness in a foreign country. However, "The Reluctant Tuscan" is a memoir of another stripe. Peter Mayle wrote of his frustrations in restoring a hotel in Provence with whimsy and affection. After reading the iconic "Under the Tuscan Sun," we dreamed of booking a flight on Alitalia. Few will want to join sitcom writer Phil Doran in his 300-year-old Italian farmhouse, as this is a man who not only went kicking and screaming to the hills of Tuscany but did a fair share of kvetching once he arrived.

While still in California the once in demand Doran found himself viewed as a bit of a dinosaur as the younger writers were leaving him in the dust. He'd been married for a quarter of a century to Nancy, a sculptor, who frequently visited Italy for work and study. Perhaps her extended visits were for the best as their relationship was a bit rocky.

Nancy had some thoughts about this and decided the remedy was for Phil to move to Italy. To that end she purchased an old farmhouse badly in need of repair - reconstruction might be more accurate. She is, in his description, somewhat of a "nest builder," someone who wants to make things beautiful. "When she sees a house she wants to redo," he writes, "she gets a look on her face like a fifteen-year-old boy on a topless beach."

From the first, when he swelters in a closed plane on the runway because the ground crew can't open the doors, we know Phil won't find much to love in Italy. In his eyes, the house is worse than he could have imagined. It was such a heap that it didn't even have an address. It's one asset was its location - atop a hill. The problem was there wasn't any road leading to it, so Nancy put one in completely unaware that she was breaking a number of local laws.

The house had been purchased from the Pingatore family who now want it back - want it so badly that a crone, Vesuvia Pingatore, fixed them with an evil eye, a malocchio. Her figure can be seen watching them from her window.

With every setback in rebuilding their home, Phil is ready to return to California, completely frustrated by a country that seems to have millions of laws but no rules, and considers a two hour lunch a birthright.

However, in time he wonders if he really wants to go back to the world of mega egos "vainglorious self-promotion, and monumental insincerity." After all, he's finally learning not to put Parmesan cheese on pasta with seafood and not to drink coffee until after a meal.

Italophiles will enjoy this return to a fabled country, even when guided by a very, very reluctant Tuscan.

- Gail Cooke

Phil Doran's "The Reluctant Tuscan" centered around Phil and his wife, Nancy's quest to convert a shack to a house in Tuscany. It started as Nancy who was staying in Italy at that time, wanted to provide a home in Tuscany so that Phil who had been extremely stressed can find rest and relaxation. Phil had worked as a scripwriter/producer in Hollywood and had not been able to find employment. The quest to build the house started innocently enough but the Dorans soon found themselves facing obstacle after obstacle to have their house up and about. Through all their frustruation, the Dorans, particularly Phil found himself mesmerized by the Italian people and their culture, not to mention their love for food.

This was quite an interesting travelogue as the author provided a clear view of life in Tuscany, as well as the people. Doran showed how Italians were passionate and emotional people, caring, family-oriented, loud and a lot of times, very "in-your-face." This book wasn't just about the Dorans building a house but was about Phil's journey to self-discovery, to understand what had been missing in his life and to reconnect with his wife. This is definitely a fun book to read!

Perhaps it's because reading this book brought back so many memories for me, but for my money, this is the best book by an author I didn't previously know, that I've read in five years.

I spent two years living all over northern Italy--all the way from the Slovenian (then Yugoslavian) border town of Gorizia to the Italian Riviera (La Spezia and San Remo), with a seven month stopover in Tuscany--Florence and Siena.

Doran gets the Italians, and he gets them right, all the way from their maddening buearacracy (sp), which make any American buearacracy look sensible in comparison, to their split personality about religion and sex--the walls covered with nudie pin ups and pictures of Christ.

Underlying all of this in the end, is a love affair with loveable people. People who are loud, and quick to take offense, and equally willing to forgive.

Doran has a breezy comic style, honed by many years of working on some of Hollywood's best sitcoms--and some not so great. I can tell you from my own experience, in most cases, he's underplaying things.

Reading this made me homesick.

Read this and enjoy.

Over the past decade, a curious new literary genre has emerged: that of the American writer seeking a bucolic existence in Europe. Such novels generally involve the writer in question purchasing a run-down villa, and then chronicling the restoration stone by stone. Frances Mayes's "Under the Tuscan Sun" set off an avalanche of similarly themed Tuscan memoirs, some more pompous than others, waxing poetic on the mystical quality of the Tuscan light, the sensual delights of Tuscan produce, etc.

Enter The Reluctant Tuscan. Phil Doran was practically dragged to Tuscany from L.A. Although his wife has spent several years in Italy working as a sculptor, Phil has no desire to restore the crumbling heap that his wife purchased in a moment of "inspiration." Add to that feuding neighbors, an uncooperative bureaucracy, and Phil's fading career as a sitcom writer/producer, and at first glance you think, "Under the Tuscan Sun Part V."

Don't be so quick to judge. Doran revitalizes the genre by a new twist: humor, and lots of it, in the biting style of Dave Barry (or travel host Rick Steves's witty observations). He pokes fun at Italian stereotypes of Americans and vice versa, of the rough-and-tumble country neighbors, the oddities of working in Hollywood, and his own transformation from stressed-out American yuppie to being in tune with his Tuscan side.

The book is an enjoyable read, and just when you think that the next page is predictable, something comes along to shake up the story. Although Doran writes extensively about his career, I never found the story to descend into a self-centered memoir. There are valuable insights on marriage and relationships, the stress of being replaced by a younger generation at work, of learning a new language and way of life, and embracing the unknown. The novel's ultimate message is don't be afraid to take a chance...the journey is more important that the destination.

I am a reader who usually takes 5 weeks or more to get through a book. Once I started The Reluctant Tuscan I could not put it down. I had it finished in 2 days!! The author's humor and experiences made this book one to tell everyone about. Anyone who has ever done any type of home remodeling will connect with the author's journey and be able to laugh about events that at a previous time would have had you in a different frame of mind. I can not stress enough DON'T PASS THIS ONE BY. If they had 10 stars that's where I would have rated it.

"The Reluctant Tuscan" is a lighthearted, humor-filled account of a washed-up TV screenwriter move to Tuscany at the behest of his wife. Reflecting the humor typical of an American situation comedy that he worked on as a writer or executive producer, Phil Doran takes you through the trials of his adjustment to Italian life after giving up the fast lane in LA. The book is witty and filled with superb stories that capture the incongruities of Italian life in a charming way. This is not another "Under the Tuscan Sun." I heartily recommend it.

There was only one instance where I found Phil Doran to miss the mark. He compared the gathering of Italians to help each other with the fall harvest to communism as practiced in North Korea and Cuba. What Phil Doan seems to miss is that the Italian form of collective action is informally coordinated and it is an expression of individual free will. Communism as practiced in North Korean and Cuba is collective action imposed on individuals by the coercive power of government. These two things aren't even in the same league, and it is a discredit to the Tuscans who have developed such bonds of trust to compare it to something as disparaging to the human condition as Communism.