Customer Reviews

Under the Tuscan Sun

5 star:		(152)
4 star:		(106)
3 star:		(57)
2 star:		(78)
1 star:		(90)

 

 

As someone who is used to taking frequent Mediterranean vacations but was marooned stateside this past summer, I thanked my lucky stars for happening upon this book. It was just the escape I needed. As I got deeper into it, I felt myself becoming more and more enamored with Tuscany, Bramasole and its cast of characters. Mayes hits her stride with rich, textured detail of her environment after the first 50 pages or so. Before that, she gets a little too bogged down in renovation process. I really felt that I was there, right down to hearing the crickets singing in the hot summer sun. Unlike so many others who reviewed this book, I was not offended at all by her descriptions of the Tuscan locals or the lifestyle. She was very complimentary and respectful of everyone she wrote about. One thing that could have been left out - the references to Mayes childhood that screamed "I'm wealthy!" The recipe chapters were an added bonus and inspired me to get cooking. Try the mushroom lasagna with bechamel sauce in the later food chapter - it's divine. The bottom line - if you're looking for a wry, humorous account of life as an expatriate, a la Peter Mayle, this book won't do it for you. But if you want to immerse yourself in a richly written tribute to the rolling hills of a gorgeous, faraway land, Tuscan Sun is not to be missed.

Although this book has appeal for a very broad audience (thus its success), she's not writing for anyone -- or any particular genre. If you are looking for a practical travel guide, you will be disappointed. If you are looking for a renovation guide, ditto. If you are looking for a story about her love for Ed, you won't get it. If you want it as a cookbook, you will be bored by everything else.

However, if you pick up the book as none of those things above, simply as one woman's collection of memories -- a portrait of her summers with a focus on the land and its pleasures -- you will be enraptured. You will not regret this book if you expect it to be full of little gems of information. Instead of tedious details, look at her close description of everything she does as poetry. Immerse yourself in her unique and rich language, and the book will warm your soul.

I was thoroughly dissatisfied with this novel. Due to extreme stubbornness, I forced myself to finish after several grueling months. After seeing the movie, which I adored, I starting searching for this book expecting it to be even better. The book, however, is not even slightly similar to the movie. The movie chronicled the main characters search for romance. The book, however, is a true story focusing on the restoration of an old Tuscan house Frances Mayes, the author, and her husband purchased. She describes ever step of remodeling her house in painful detail; there was an entire twenty page chapter focusing on the removal and replacement of old linoleum. Do not worry, we are also told in detail about the disposal of the aforesaid linoleum! Several other lengthy chapters were dedicated to Mayes and her husband having a custom made wrought iron gate constructed and installed. Other chapters are dedicated to the reconstruction of a stone wall around their house and, of course, we are told in depth about the various building requirements, tools, workmen, and disposal of any unusable stone. Also, the reader is allowed the thrill of excruciatingly long chapters dedicated to the remodeling of bathrooms and kitchens which, as we all know, is a subject of endless fascination. As if this is not exciting enough, the reader receives lengthy dissertations on the author's shopping trips chronicling everything she bought from bed sheets to silverware. Later, as the excitement builds to a climax, the reader is allowed a exhaustive chapter on her cleaning the floors and windows as well as painting the walls. Often, she would include entire chapters of recipes, which could have been enjoyable if it were included as a bonus at the conclusion of the novel and not an actual part of the story. Therefore, if you enjoy three hundred pages of one woman's struggle against bathroom grout, old linoleum, and bad decorating taste, or, if you are looking for a novel that is faster and more effective than a sleeping pill, then this is the book for you.

- Ravenova

It's time to toss out your copy of "Under the Tuscan Sun" with the rest of the junk you're disposing of during spring cleaning, and replace it with a much wiser and better book about a foreigner's experiences in Italy: Annie Hawes' memoir "Extra Virgin." If you've never heard of Annie Hawes, that's not surprising, since the best-seller sensation created by "Tuscan Sun" has pretty much drowned it out.

What's wrong with Frances Mayes' volume, you may ask. Just about everything. We all know her basic story by now: American woman buys dilapidated villa in Tuscany (just outside Cortona), and spends a fortune restoring, decorating, furnishing, and appointing it, while coyly refusing to acknowledge the virtually unlimited financial resources that make all that possible. Thanks to a well-chosen title and sharp marketing, she managed to tap into the fantasies of millions of American readers, most of whom will never set foot in Tuscany, much less own a villa there.

Her book is full of smug, self-congratulatory prose- verbal "O lucky me!" hand-clapping- along with recipes, and "vacations from her vacation" in Tuscany with her mysterious gentleman friend, identified only as "Ed."

Mayes tries to be lyrical and profound in her effusions about Tuscany, but instead comes across as shallow, pretentious, self-absorbed, and condescending. When I analyzed what it is that I find so obnoxious about Mayes, I realized that a good part of my annoyance comes from her patronizing attitude toward Italians, and her mind-boggling degree of ignorance of Italian culture, religion, art, and history.

She thinks Italians were put on this earth for her personal entertainment- they're so quaint, with their funny hand gestures and odd little customs that she makes no effort to understand. Or else, they exist to perform whatever manual labor at her villa she finds too heavy or too tedious, and whatever skilled labor her exacting Martha Stewart standards of decorating demand. At no point does she form any meaningful relationships with Italians- they're either her household servants, her day laborer-employees, the shopkeepers from whom she makes her unending stream of purchases, or the few snobbish rich people who associate with her only because of her own wealth. She finds the Italian version of Catholicism amusing, and wants a holy water font for home decoration.

Her comments on Italian art are pretentious, poorly informed, and without a single interesting insight. Her one moment of humility comes when she admits her difficulties in learning Italian. (An informant in Cortona tells me that even after a decade spent mostly in Italy, Mayes still speaks terrible Italian, with an appalling accent.)

But so what? She doesn't need to know Italian. Mayes lives in the insulated dreamworld that only the very wealthy can afford to build around themselves. There are no poor people in Mayes' book, nobody unemployed, nobody mentally ill or physically disabled. No word on the tragic swathe that heroin and cocaine addiction has cut through even the smallest and most remote Italian towns. Nothing about the intractable problem of illegal immigrants flooding the Italian peninsula from Eastern Europe and Africa, although she is happy to hire Polish laborers, implying that they work harder and produce better results than Italians. In passing she mentions the puzzling presence of African prostitutes by a roadside, but then hurries back to her interminable musings on selecting a competent gardener, or stonemason, or woodworker, trying to make up her mind between tile or marble for the renovation of her many bathrooms, or buying yet another set of antique linens. The parties she gives and attends are so unvaryingly elegant that you start wishing someone would belch, tell a dirty joke, get nastily drunk, come down with a case of Tuscan Tummy, or admit to cravings for a Big Mac. Did I mention that Mayes has absolutely NO sense of humor?

Readers seem divided between those who are ecstatic over the book, and those in whom it activated the gag reflex. Count this reader among the latter.

Background: I lived and worked in Italy for a year, and have since returned for a total time of about two years spent in central Italy, primarly Bologna and the Lazio region. I speak Italian well, and have very close Italian friends whom I see regularly. I passionately love the country, its traditions, language and culture, and when I picked up 'Under the Tuscan Sun', it was in the hopes of finding a kindred spirt of sorts, an American with a love for Italy and all it has to offer.

Boy, was I wrong. At one point, I threw the book across the room in disgust. I finished the book, as I wanted to discover the answer to the questions I developed early on: Did Ms. Mayes ever talk to any Italian who didn't work for her? Does she have Italian friends who aren't financially obligated to her in some way or another? Does she know any Italians that she can invite for dinner with no business goal to discuss? Has she ever really listened to what any of them have to say, or do the ubiquitous hand gestures that so fascinate her monopolize her thought processes all the time? In all the years that she has been going to Italy, has she ever made a close Italian friend? My conclusion to all of these questions by the end of the book was negative.

I have two Italian friends that read and speak English, and I gave them a copy of the book, without letting them know how I felt ahead of time. Their reactions were the same as mine: they were insulted by her condescending descriptions. It's an old story for Italians -- Americans and British expatriates long for a place missing the messiness and tedium of everyday North American/British life, and invent one in Italy. The problem is, this invented reality leaves out the day to day lives of everyday Italians. It's a fantasy life for expatriates rich enough to afford the illusion, but it doesn't allow for actual Italians.

Basically, I agree with a reviewer above: This is Martha Stewart does Italy. Ms. Mayes is a good writer, so it's well-described Martha Stewart book, but fundamentally it's lacking in any depth at all. This book is just another addition to the long series of books and movies about those cute, rustic Italians and their adorable hand gestures.

As an Italian living in Italy, I generally find books describing my country written by foreigners as funny, but this one was a total delusion. The author claims to describe "real" Italy to her fellow Americans, but half the quotations in Italian she made are simply ridiculous, out of context, and full of spelling and grammatical errors. Moreover, she reports with amusement some very rude and offensive swearwords in Italian that nobody would dare to write in a "poetic" book if they really understood them. Imagine that I write a memory of my months spent in New York filling it with four-letter-words, citing all those funny Americans, talking in their weird-sounding and colorful language. People descriptions in Mayes' book were just pathetic, disney-like characters whose solely purpose was to make the author feel compassionate about them. Ah, the old fascist with Mussolini's portrait on the wall, those wonderful, simple Poles, and the green-eyed boy, so similar to a faun! Please, give me a break! People in Italy, like anywhere else, are real men and women, with real people feelings and real life problems, not out of this world aliens whose only preoccupation is to enjoy their "siesta" (not an Italian word, by the way) and to stroll leisurely day and night. If you want to read about real life in real Italy, try "Italian neighbours" and "An Italian Education", by Tim Parks, who at least actually lives in Italy, not in an idealized Tuscany, and doesn't bore you with endless descriptions of house renovation and shopping experiences. The recipes, although, sounded authentic: I've nevere heard about most of them, but I'm not familiar with Tuscan cuisine.

Verbose, cliché-ridden, superficial, and materialistic, this book stars not Tuscany but Frances Mayes, who treats Italy like a gigantic mall. In her view, Italian architecture, food, wine, art, history, and even people exist only as products to decorate the author's personal Disneyland. The book's success can be explained only by marketing hype and critics' reluctance to speak the truth. Fellow readers, the emperor is naked. Save your money, and a tree. If you want to read about Italian food, go to the real authorities: Marcella Hazan or Mayes's own source, Elizabeth David.

You enjoy it while it lasts, get a little heartburn about half way through, and you feel a little funny after you're done. And you know that it's all just empty calories...

I was debating whether or not I should do a cycling tour of Tuscany when I spotted this book. I took it as a sign from above, so I immediately purchased it in hopes of being inspired to do the tour. Well... I WAS inspired, but not as much as I would've hoped.

Much like others have said, the first third of this book is quite sweet and captivating. It does a great job of drawing a sparse, beautifully concise mental picture of the Tuscan countryside. I really enjoyed her literary 'frugality'.

However, the only frugality she exhibits appears to be in her prose... As the book drags on, it becomes more and more the transcribed diary of a spoiled little rich girl who has trouble keeping the reins on her pocketbook. I found the references to shoe-shopping addictions to be particularly shallow.

And after the umpteenth complaint about cost overruns on the house renovations - followed by inexplicable spending sprees - I began to hear the phrase, "Awwww, the poor wittle baby" going through my head more and more. If everything's so darn expensive, why do you keep buying, and buying, and buying?

But I must admit that there is the odd sprinkle of profundity throughout the text. Every twenty pages or so, there was something - perhaps only one sentence - that would strike a chord within me, and would make me put the book down, look out the window, and remark to myself, "So, so true." In particular, her description of travel and its effect on the traveller was especially meaningful to me. It put into words what I've felt in the past, many times, but was unable to explain.

Overall, this book is charming, frustrating, occasionally profound, but mostly vacant.

A perfect book to read while sitting in a hammock - or the tub - when you have absolutely no desire to stretch your intellectual capacity.

Frances Mayes "Under the Tuscan Sun" is filled with beautiful images of Italy's most famous region, Tuscany. Her greatest achievment is not the book itself, but her courage after a divorce in middle age to roll the dice in a new country with new rules and regulations, dealing in a foreign language and coming out a winner buying farmhouse hundreds of years old near Cortona, that by her description sounds like heaven. The story of how she did it, dealing with the quirky workers and contractors and transforming an abandoned shell into a Tuscan dream is fascinating. I admire her determination to turn a vision into reality. The problem I had with this book is that it I often felt like I was reading someone's diary, something by choice I would normally avoid. I think Mayes could have done more to remove the reader from feeling that he/she was simply reading notes she (Mayes) had jotted down over the years. I also felt that sometimes the writing was forced. It sounded sometimes like she was really working hard to lusciously describe something, but I often saw her effort, not her subject. The second to last chapter is a bizarre tour of Mayes childhood in Georgia in which she tries to compare strange customs in her native rural Georgia to the strange customs she observes of Italians. The problem is I don't want to read about Georgia or the strange customs of the South. I want to read about Tuscany, Cortona and her adventures there. That chapter compared to the rest of the book was unpleasant. Despite that there are nice descriptions of the region. Her sentimental thinking about family members who must have lived in the house, and the recurring story of an old man who continuously drops off flowers at a shrine to the Virgin Mary on her property are little glimpses of Italian life that most Americans never think of. Although it was unusual I appreciated the recipes in a couple of chapters of the book, they look delicious, though I have yet to put any to the test. Perhaps my timing affected my appreciation of the book. I had just read Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence" which is better organized and more cleverly woven together. Reading "Under the Tuscan Sun" immediatley following, made Mayes' book a little dissapointing. But I don't regret buying or reading the book. As an Italian American it was a delightful trip back to the old country. I just felt it could have been more polished.

This book is extremely boring. I understand that this is a memoir, and I did not expect crazy fictional characters to pop out. However, absolutely nothing pops out. Mayes talks about her life in Italy, but there's no deep meaning to living in Italy. She isn't advocating change in American societies. She isn't persuading people to take on a better life. All she is doing is describing her surroundings and what she does day to day. Her descriptions are drawn out with no end. She describes every single little thing that she sees, hears, and smells without a purpose or a reason.

How I wish I could be a best-selling author just by describing the pimples on the faces I see as I walk down the littered path, winding around the dark gray somber buildings of the city in which I reside, so desperately and with such agony.

Her flowery language leaves my innards pushing through my parched throat as I try not to fling the book out of my hand in the swift motion that it, the book, so deserves. And I only stop myself from doing so because I do not want to hit the passer-by who stares at me with inquisitive eyes, beseaching me to tell him why I'm seething with boredom.

(Honestly, that's how her book sounds to me. If you like super fake flowery language, go right ahead. I'd rather get my perfumed flowery description fix from the classics like Thomas Hardy, DH Lawrence, or even Salman Rushdie...)