A Garden in Lucca : Finding Paradise in Tuscany

Rating:
Summary: Review from GRAPEVINE magazine
Review: A Garden in Lucca is bound to give pleasure to anyone who loves Lucca in particular and Tuscany in general. Readers who have lived in Lucca for some years may also get an added frisson from recognising some of the characters who appear in the book.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I read A Garden in Lucca just after finishing Spanish Lessons--a similar, but more interesting book by Derek Lambert. Paul Gervais writes in a style that merely skims the surface, never getting to the heart of either gardening or life in Tuscany. Garden descriptions are wordy with details that don't give any indication of the effect created. I also was disappointed that Gervais seemed to name-drop (and live) extensively in the ex-patriot community, rarely giving any insight into Tuscan life or culture. By contrast, Spanish Lessons, a novel about an English family's move to Spain, was so alive with insight into the experience of assimilating into a small town in Spain. Perhaps a true gardener would have found this book more interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Expectations unmet
Review: I was disappointed in A Garden in Lucca. The book was advertised as the process of education of an amateur gardener after he bought a house with 60 acres of land in Italy. In the prologue we learn that the restored garden was so fine, the author had been asked to allow it to be included in a garden tour. Tantalizing. How did he get from a novice beginning to such glory?

Other than a few paragraphs here and there and chapters at the end of the book which described the garden tour as well as parts of the garden photographed for a lecture, the garden is rarely described at all. Instead, we hear a lot about the author's friends and how important they are, the impressive gardens he visits (more name dropping than descriptive) and the lengthy account of a sale of the house to an impressively wealthy family that never happened. When I finished reading, I was so hungry to read about real gardening by a real gardener, that I immediately reached for my collection of old out of print Beverley Nichols books. Ah! Satisfaction at last!

Rating:
Summary: A Garden in Lucca: Finding Paradise in Tuscany
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Massachusetts 'Yankee' in Italian Paradise
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Garden in Lucca: Finding Paradise in Tuscany
Review: Novelist Gervais (Extraordinary People) has lived in Italy for the past 18 years. Here, with line drawings, he recounts his experiences, as a novice gardener, of creating an acclaimed garden out of the overgrown grounds of a Renaissance Tuscan hunting lodge. There are delightful sketches of eccentric fellow gardeners, accounts of his relationship with the caretaker who came as part of the deal, and a suspenseful description of his attempt, at one point, to sell the property. We read about the tribulations caused by a peacock Gervais received as a gift and his purchase of large, hand-crafted clay pots that were the last of a set made at a pottery that was closing down. (Prince Charles bought the rest.) Gervais is a talented writer, and his memoir makes for entertaining and easy reading. Fans of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun will also enjoy. For gardening and travel collections.--

Rating:
Summary: Expectations unmet
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The medium-well tempered garden book.....
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: AN ITALIAN TRANSFORMATION
Review: The other reviews I read before I got this book were just great so my anticipation was high on reading this. I stopped the whole thing at page 75. Why? There were so many foreign words used (Italian & French) that they got in the way of comfortable reading for me. This couple "bet the store" that they would make their move to Italy successful...and they did. I must pass on this book.

Rating:
Summary: Bona fide
Review: 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.