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Summary: Read this book if you love Italy, cooking and houses.
Review: I picked this book up in a country bookshop in Suffolk, England and I could not put it down. The author takes you every step of her journey in buying and renovating this neglected but grand Italian villa , exploring her love of Italy and, importantly for me, her passion for cooking and wonderful ingredients. She paints detailed portraits of the local workmen and, as she makes her regular visits to Cortona down the Roman road, you travelled with her. She describes the heat and hard work in unravelling her terraced garden, the olive trees, their first harvest and the fascination with discovering wells and creating new ones. It was an innovative idea to include recipes within the text and I will be cooking my way through these. Finally I do hope she is considering a further book on her Italian home.
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Summary: I want a house in Tuscany too!
Review: Ms. Mayle's prose is delicious. I didn't know a thing about this bookwhen I picked it up but I felt immediatly transported to the beautiful, lush Tuscan land. In between I tore up my gardens, cooked the resipes and planned my escape to Italy...anywhere in Italy. I was afraid of reading a travelouge, but this book is anything but. I also identified with what I thought was the author's 'life crisis' and the way in which she tansformed her life with the great adventure of picking up and going to a foreign land. Maybe you have to be over forty to appreciate that kind of wanderlust but I admire Mayle's energy and committment. This book is about more than a place in Italy. It's also about a state of mind.
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Summary: A boring and tedious account about life in Tuscany
Review: A lackluster and tedious account about purchasing and renovating an old residential structure in Tuscany by a university professor from San Fracisco and her nearly non-existent husband (at least from the book's account). This author is so consumed with self (you'll hear about her job as departmental chair...) that you never get any sense of what life really might be like in this part of Italy. Except for a few interesting food recipes, this book is not a good use of your time. If you want local flavor in sleepy western Europe. Read Peter Mayle.
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Summary: I want to SEE it!
Review: Very pleasant and interesting reading. My daughter, Bates graduate in Art History, wants to go visit! Glossary of terms -- both Italian and cooking -- would be helpful for those of us who really know nothing about either! Most importantly, where can we view pictures -- the cover illustration does not come close to the description within -- a pictorial essay would be a delight -- before & afters, and the like!
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Summary: How I long to feel that Tuscan sun!
Review: Frances Mayes does do a bit of a Peter Mayle vis-a-vis A Year in Provence, however with the very first paragraph I could see the beautiful house with it's honey golden walls, faded green shutters and the gorgeous sun drenched terraced fields. I could feel myself standing there looking at it through her eyes. I have no experience of any of Maye's previous writing and was handed this book by my mother in law who got if from my sister in law who actually lived in Florence for a year and fell in love with the Tuscan countyside back then. (She used to send us postcards with the four seasons in Tuscany and it looked like a dream). As we have all travelled Italy (and NO - we are not rich or pretentious - only normal Aussies!)and all fell in love with the Italian countryside - it seemed too delicious a book not to share with each other. I must admit that I have not even finished reading the book as yet, but was curious to see what other readers thought of it and was then prompted to add my comments also. I love Maye's description of the Tuscan life and can only imagine it appearing as a dream too good to be true when she returns home to SF. I would much rather be spending nine months of my year in Tuscany than anywhere else - though I suppose you have to pay for your whims somehow! Being a fan of history I enjoyed reading accounts of Roman mastery in building viaducts etc, but I never expected to get lessons in cookery, redecorating, science - the life of the fig-pollinating wasp, all in the one masterpiece of a book. A number of people have asked me what am I reading when they see the cover of the book and I tell them I am not reading - I am being transported to Tuscany late on a lazy summer's day, worn out with working in the garden and just sitting down to a supper of fresh pasta with wild mushrooms, cream, arugula and topped with fresh parmigiano - fresh fruit for after all washed down with a perfect Grechetto. Oh please let me find a way to spend a summer in Tuscany!! I, like many ot! hers, will be savouring this book to the very last page hoping that it will never end!
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Summary: I Loved It.
Review: I read the book twice. I love the vivid descriptions of the Tuscany countryside, the recipes and the people. One of my favorite books. It's an adventure and you're along for the ride.
Rating:
Summary: Surpassed my expectations
Review: I walked throught the streets of Manhattan reading this novel, unable to put it down. I cannot tell you how many women of all ages (on busses, in the street) smiled knowingly at me when they saw what I was reading. Ms Mayes succeds in capturing the intangible wonders of Italy that are so difficult to put into words. She allows you to be completely envelopped by what she sees, tastes and feels. I also appreciate that she does not patronize the reader by pretending to have become Italian through her residence there. She keeps reminding us she is still a foreigner. I loved the recipes. It reminded me of Like Water for Chocolate. I look forward to more novels very soon.
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Summary: A delightful journey of the mind.
Review: Frances Mayes has accomplished what she set out to do (I think). She has given us a glimpse of what an adventure in travel, cooking, entertaining, rebuilding and history can be at its best. She is a poet who expresses herself beautifully and I cannot get over the "class envy" evidenced by some of the previous comments. When I told my 83-year old mother about this book she said, "Please send it to me when you are finished...I'll never go to Italy, but I can visualize everything and go there in my mind." Isn't that what it's all about?
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Summary: The aurthor seems disconnected from the land and the people
Review: I was very dissapointed in this book. Mayer seemed to be doing a house in Tuscany because it was the "in" thing to do, not because she loved the land and it's people. She never seases trying to impress us (or herself) with her level of sophistcation. For people who are interested in knowing what it would be like to live and upgrade a house in a small town in italy, this is not the book for you. A far superoir book is A Valley in Italy, by Lisa St Aubin DeTeran, who really gives the reader a vicarious experience of living and working with the people in a small town in Italy. It is a delightful book which puts Under the Tuscan Sun to shame.
Rating: 
Summary: Good food, with a side order of snobbery
Review: Not that this book needs one more opinion, but what the heck. Frances Mayes is a talented writer, born to a life of privilege she never once acknowledges. All I wanted was one sentence saying, God, I am SO lucky to be able to do this. But it never came. Although there are some great sentences, and the food descriptions are lush and sensual, when it comes right down to it, Mayes is pretentious, condescending, and incredibly self-absorbed. Pity the workers who've built Bramasole into a pleasure dome . . .
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