Under the Tuscan Sun

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Summary: Would have been a very good magazine article..
Review: There is nothing WRONG with this book, but I just got tired of reading it after getting three-quarters of the way through. Each individual chapter seems fine but I found I was continuing to read not because I cared what was going to happen or the writing was so nice but because one is SUPPOSED to finish a book. Each chapter was starting to sound like the last. (Peter Mayles' "A Year in Provence" was a little like that but much wittier and smark-alecky. This book is much too earnest.)

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Summary: I suddenly long to travel to Tuscany
Review: Without a doubt, this is my favorite kind of book, but this is a particularly wonderful example of the genre. Frances Mayes just transported me to Italy, to Bramasole, to a land of sun and olives, garlic and pasta, roses and lavender. This is the kind of experience I believe we all long for at one time or another, the in-depth immersion into another culture, happiness untempered by guilt (oh how I love those passages on allowing herself to be happy, and oh how I'll try to learn from them). The bottom line is, Under the Tuscan Sun made me feel very happy and full of possibilities, and I would highly recommend it to anyone

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Summary: Intoxicating.
Review: Ms. Mayes' writing can only be explained as intoxicating. She literally transplants the reader into a world filled with sun, Roman roads, herbs and many other splendid characteristics. She removes you from your modern life and introduces you to one that nobody can resist. She truly shows how to live in Italy. How to experience it for what it is rather than what you can buy there. Through her experiences of fixing up a deteriorating historic home she allows you to experience the seasons in a way nothing else can. Nothing can be closer to heaven than reading this book.

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Summary: Cash In Your 401-K and Head to Tuscany!
Review: UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN warms the reader as much as the sun in its title. You live every frustrating and joyful moment of Frances Mayes's purchase and renovation of her beloved Bramasole, the delicious foods of the region and the pressing of her very own olive oil. The only thing that could have made this book more perfect would have been information about what it all cost. I know I can't afford to do what she did, but I'd like to know how far off I am

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Summary: Food, Stone, Gardens, HOME
Review: With Callas and Puccini on the CD, black olives, cheese and wine to nibble on, I likewise devoured this marvelous book about Italy. Though I'll never be a gardener or cook or house restorer like the author, she gives us so much more than just these. History, politics, religion, bump up next to Italian drivers and martyred saints mystically experiencing the foreskin of Jesus in their mouths --all to give a marvelous picture of Italy. I read this book soon after An Italian Education by Tim Parks and found them wonderful companion pieces.If you like Italy, you'll love this book. No pictures necessary because her descriptions are so vivid and evocative

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Summary: Beautifully descriptive experiencesof author'slife inTuscany
Review: The author, a creative writing teacher at San Francisco State University, draws us a poetic picture of her experiences in Tuscany. Frances Mayes' lyrical descriptions of her villa's renovations combine with delicious recipes for the regional cuisine to make your heart and soul long for the sunny Tuscan skies. Her adventures exploring the nearby Tuscan countryside, from ancient Etruscan tombs to Renaissance churches, fill you with wanderlust. A beautiful country tale artistically told by an American who loves what she sees and where she is. Her story took me away, tempting me to travel to the book's location to search out her villa, her gardens, her Italian Tuscan sun

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Summary: Browse our favorite reviews:
Review: "Her book is a romance for people who'd rather read M.F.K. Fisher than Barbara Cartland. There are nods to Gaston Bachelard's "Poetics in Space," insights into Renaissance painting and references to James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but what Ms. Mayes mostly provides are the kind of satisfying personal crotchets and enthusiasms you might exchange with an old friend over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table..." ---Alida Becker, The New York Times Book Review ////////// "Somehow, this is a narrative at once joyful and full of common sense, a balance that few other writers have struck so perfectly. It's as intimate as a lover's whisper, honest and true, and vividly captures a sense of place." ---Brian St. Pierre, The San Francisco Chronicle ////////// "What also sets this book apart from many of its expatriate compatriots, books about running away to live in the place of one's dreams, is that Mayes is not really running away from anything unbearable. She's running to somehting delightful, to a place she has found that feels utterly natural and comfortable to her." ---Susan Salter Reynolds, The Los Angeles Time

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Summary: Lovely, lovely Tuscany
Review: Even if you never plan to visit Tuscany, it is worthwhile to saturate yourself in Tuscan sunshine, inhale the aromas of Italian meals and feel the heartbeat of the countryside by reading this book. Mayes' words are so evocative that the scenes she describes transport you from your armchair to Tuscany immediately.
I put off reading this for quite a while thinking it must surely be overhyped. I'm glad I got past that and allowed myself the pleasure of seeing Tuscany through Frances Mayes' eyes.
I think some of the negative reviews on Amazon carry overtones of jealousy. Sure we would all love to have the funds to have a second home in a scenic spot on the planet. Wouldn't we enjoy having the summer off to indulge ourselves playing lord of the manor? I sure would, but reading her book gave me the chance to experience it vicariously and I thank her for that.

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Summary: Audio version comment
Review: The content of this is very good - but don't read it when you are travelling along empty stretches of highways and you are hungry! It's torture! I have read the first in this series -Under the Tuscan Sun and listened to the audio of In Tuscany, read by the author. I think another reviewer commented that F. Mayes obviously does not speak Italian. Well, I'm not sure whether she does or doesn't but I can certify that she has absolutely no Italian accent. Not a shred. I found that the audio was not as appealing as it might have been had it been read by someone else with a better acting voice and a facility for an Italian accent for the Italian phrases.

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Summary: Nice images, Nice Recipes, reads like a diary
Review: 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.