Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life Reviews
Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life
- ISBN13: 9780767929820
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life
In this sequel to her New York Times bestsellers Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, the celebrated “bard of Tuscany” (New York Times) lyrically chronicles her continuing, two decades-long love affair with Tuscany’s people, art, cuisine, and lifestyle.
Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has experienced since Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and vivid pleasures of Italian life. Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a 13th century house with a stone roof in the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a “wilder” side of Tuscany–and with it a lively engagement with Tuscany’s mountain people. Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention to life in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden. Moving always toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons that have become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which bigger ideas emerged, and of the writing life she has enjoyed in the room where Under the Tuscan Sun began.
With more on the pleasures of life at Bramasole, the delights and challenges of living in Italy day-to-day and favorite recipes, Every Day in Tuscany is a passionate and inviting account of the richness and complexity of Italian life.Kim Sunée Reviews Every Day in Tuscany
Kim Sunée is the author of Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home. 
“The Bard of Tuscany” (New York Times) is back and better than ever. Two decades have passed since the purchase of Bramasole, Frances Mayes’s first Italian adventure into the meaning of home, made famous in Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany. In Every Day in Tuscany, her third beautifully rendered memoir, Mayes generously serves up another delicious helping. She continues to contemplate the satisfaction of a life created by one’s own hard work, but also celebrates the joys of the piazza, reminisces on her South Georgia roots, reveals her love of architecture and painting, and is especially hungry to follow the trail (which she has generously mapped out for us) of Renaissance painter Luca Signorelli.
After transforming Bramasole, you’d think that Mayes would have had enough of repairs and renovations, but she expands the idea of belonging with the purchase of a mountainside cottage. One day, as she and husband, Ed, are picking blackberries on a rugged slope above Cortona, Mayes writes of being “fatally attracted” to a “lonesome beauty,” a partially collapsed stone-roof cottage. This new home becomes a place of comfort, especially when something shifts, when “one glorious summer evening at Bramasole,” Mayes writes, “something unexpected intruded on this paradise.”
Enchanted by the simple life, a life lived in accordance with the cycles of the sun and moon, Mayes tells her story through the seasons of a country and those of the heart. Winter is about restoring privacy, summer for reading, moonlight swims, watermelon and plum crostata. Mostly, though, the seasons are made up of days meant for being. She admires the Italians for their ease and grace of pure existence. “How do Italian friends naturally keep the jouissance they were born with?” she wonders.
Since Mayes is a poet first, her prose is infused with startling and indelible moments, and she will always inspire you to cook something. Luckily, there are recipes for everything from Melva’s Peach Pie to Risotto with White Truffles, as well as mouthwatering menus, including Roasted Garlic with Walnuts and Guinea Hen with Pancetta. Of the choreography of the kitchen, she writes, “meat glistens, lettuces float, you sneeze, I sing oh, my love, my darling, and dough rises in soft moons the size of my cupped hand as planet earth tilts us toward dinner.”
People are always eating in Mayes’s world, and eating well. But good food is essential for a good life, which includes travel and the private discovery of something no less significant than a new star. On watching a couple from Milan eat a midday meal consisting of a full antipasto platter, risotto, then steaks, she writes, “Those are delicious moments for the traveler–a fine lunch with someone you love, poring over the The Blue Guide and Gambero Rosso, a weekend to explore a new place and each other.”
More than anything, Every Day in Tuscany is a book for all travelers, those hungry hearts craving a lesson in living life to the fullest, whether at home or on the road. “It is paradoxical but true,” she tells us, “that something that takes you out of yourself also restores you to yourself with a greater freedom…. The excitement of exploration sprang me from a life I knew how to live into a challenging space where I was forced–and overjoyed–to invent each new day.”
With Mayes as our luminous North Star, we can navigate our way to a place where–if we are lucky–we will choose the road less-traveled, find our own rugged mountainside, and become part of the landscape, perhaps even find a sense of self, if not a place to call home.
Rating: 
(out of 82 reviews)
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Review by Alan L. Chase for Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life
Rating:
Almost twenty years ago, the publication of Frances Mayes’ “Under the Tuscan Sun” signaled the dawn of a new era in the perennial love affair between American travelers and all things Tuscan. This month, she continues her string of fascinating memoirs with “Every Day in Tuscany – Seasons of An Italian Life.”
I am one of those Americans who has fallen under the spell of Tuscany – Firenze, Siena, Chianti, the Ponte Vecchio, the three versions of Michelangelo’s David that can be found within Florence, the Duoma, the Uffizi. I absorbed the sights, sounds and flavors of this book with great gusto. If, after reading Mayes’ latest offering, you are not tempted to book a trip to Italy this summer, then I will be surprised.
The structure of this latest memoir is set between the bookends of Mayes’ arrival with her poet husband, Ed, in Cortona for their annual season in Tuscany at her beloved villa of Bramasole and their departure for their winter home in North Carolina. In her chronicling of the intervening months, she leads her readers down a leisurely path that introduces them to some of the colorful characters in town, her life-embracing neighbors, the kitchens of some of the best cooks in the world, and the vineyards and olive groves of the surrounding hillside towns.
Another thread that weaves together her meandering narratives is her love for the paintings of Luca Signorelli. She and Ed visit many Tuscan towns to have another look at some of her favorite Signorelli paintings and frescoes. Spicing up the pages of each chapter are recipes that Mayes has gleaned from treasured Italian friends, and words and phrases from the colorful Italian language. Her use of these phrases is wonderfully instructive, rather than intrusive.
She describes in loving detail some wonderful places I look forward to visiting – townsal like Urbino, Citta di Castello, Sansepolchro, Umbertide, Perugia.
When she first made the investment in the crumbling Bramasole, Mayes was regrouping after a divorce. The town folks embraced her – but cautiously. Along the way, there have been occasional indications that she was still viewed as an outsider. But the anecdotes she shares in this latest memoir make it clear that as a byproduct of her investment in the community of Cortona – and in her serving an evangelist for the ethos and frame of mind that is Tuscany – the Tuscans have now embraced her wholeheartedly as a valued member of the community and family. She describes the subtle growth and evolution of her own mind set about Tuscany – its people, its foods, its wines, its history, its joys and challenges.
This book is a total delight – like a warm and comforting taste of freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil. I encourage you to read it if you love Tuscany – or are open to being seduced by its multi-sensory beauty and charming homeliness.
Enjoy.
Abbondanza!
Al
Review by PT Cruiser for Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life
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I am a fan of Frances Mayes first book, “Under the Tuscan Sun” and thought I would really enjoy this book, but I was rather disappointed and had a lot of mixed feelings about it. The things I liked about her writing style is that she sometimes writes with a kind of flourish, lyrical and almost poetic in her descriptions. But I didn’t like that this book read more like a blog more than a story of her life there. Sometimes it felt like a lot of random thoughts that didn’t have much of a direction. It had a “thrown together” feel. Rather than feeling involved in the book like I did with her first one, I found it difficult to concentrate on it. It took me weeks to get through and I actually started and finished a couple other books while I was reading it.
I liked the recipes that were included and loved the idea of the Italians eating fresh and seasonally available foods. I liked her description of people eating and enjoying life rather than over analyzing everything they put in their mouths like many of us do here. She had many descriptions of simple meals that went on for hours, of food being a celebration rather than just a means of nourishment. This she conveyed well.
What I didn’t like was her description of “ex-pats” and tourists in Italy which came off as being condescending. Although she has owned a home there for many years, from what I’ve read she lives both there and in the U.S. during different parts of the year and it seems likely that the Italians would put her in that same “ex-pat” category. The book reads like an American living in Italy not as someone who is really a part of the community.
I thought the long discussions of her trips around the country to see the art of Luca Signorelli were just plain tedious. Perhaps including photos of his works would have made it more interesting but her descriptions weren’t enough to hold my interest and instead of drawing me in, my mind just wandered. I would rather have read more about the different towns, many of which I’ve visited, and gotten more of an insider’s view rather than the tourist’s view that she provided.
I loved her descriptions of her grandson Willie’s experiences when he came to visit. You could feel her love for him in her writing and had an idea of his amazement with Italy as seen through a child’s eyes. I could also feel her sense of loss when his vacation was over and he had to leave.
If I could have given the book 2 ½ stars, that would have been my rating, but giving the book the benefit of the doubt I’m giving it 3. I really wanted to like this book more than I did.
Review by Daniel G. Lebryk for Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life
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Many people will adore this book. Those people are attracted by Mayes previous books; they fell in love with them, and dream of having her life. This book is a voyeuristic sequel to the first two; the adoring reader can now live out the fantasy of ‘every day’ of Frances Mayes’ life in Tuscany.
For the uninitiated or the less star struck, this book is the equivalent of a rambling blog, random thoughts, observations, and events that Frances Mayes has strewn together.
Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life, tries to be many things. The book tries hard to be a story, a travel guide, a recounting of the author’s personal trials and tribulations, a cook book, an Italian language course, and art history. Sadly it doesn’t do a particularly good job at any of these tasks. It even fails at recounting the passage of time and seasons.
The title hints at a romantic view of life in utopian small town Italy. I expected some insight into Italian life and culture, or at least a small thread of story to weave that fabric of all things Italian. Instead the book is a rambling series of paragraphs disconnected from one another. Interesting stories are started and never finished. People come and go, flow in and out of the book for no apparent reason, except that Frances Mayes met them and finds them interesting for a moment. Italian artists, towns, and areas are all mentioned with the expectation that the reader knows these things, or that they are simply common knowledge. Recipes are presented willy nilly, some are fabulous, some are impossible to make. At first the recipes are described in incredible detail, gradually they become vague descriptions, and then finally they devolve into restaurant menus. The book attempts to be an Italian language course, Ms. Mayes has an annoying habit of including Italian phrases in italics and then translating them into English after a comma. This artifact is cute early in the book, but becomes annoying as the book wears on.
The great news for the Mayes fan, she uses so many towns and street names, the rabid fan can actually follow her everyday life around central and northern Italy. They can probably even locate the carefully built and heated pizza oven in her backyard, or the enormous rock table lovingly built during the bocce terrain construction, or the man wearing the wife beater t-shirt near the tranquil piazza, or the apartment floor that looks like a yacht deck in Portofino, or some minute detail of a painting by Signorelli. All these details were mentioned in the book, but none were given context, or story, or a life that had any meaning to me. They were random things that I was supposed to understand and adore.
The book turned a particularly bad corner for me during a diatribe about `ex-pats,’ or foreign tourists invading the private world of Frances Mayes and her husband Ed. She describes how the `ex-pats’ arrive, don’t speak Italian but insist on speaking loudly in English, don’t work hard with their own hands, spend too much money, and have no Italian friends. Based on what Ms. Mayes has written in this book it is very difficult to swallow her disdain for tourists. She and her husband purchased two houses that no Italian would buy. They then hired people to do the renovation. Her Italian friends mostly appear to be people with something to sell to her, from the wine merchant to the various chefs. She may well speak Italian, and that seems to be the only difference between her and the tourists. Frances Mayes has exactly one job, to be entertained every day.
Good literature engages my imagination, transports me to another place, and excites me to read every word the author has written. Very subtly, it parades the questions in front of me without answering those questions. This book is very far from that type of literature. Instead this book is many pages of the musings of a ne’er do well that is on eternal vacation. I was never engaged even when she described places I know well.
Review by Oliver Twist for Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life
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Tsk, Tsk, Tsk! In Frances Mayes new book, “Every Day in Tuscany”, she has become the quintessential “Ugly American”. Her foot-stamping, petition-signing tantrum over the building of a swimming pool for the locals within sight of her view from the terrace of Bramasole left me with a feeling of deep embarassment. She is the sort of American I shy away from when I go to Europe. She has become a self-absorbed ex-pat and I fear the Tuscan sun has set on her novels for me forever. I’m so glad I read “Every Day in Tuscany” in the book store and did not spend my good American dollars on a book that was such a huge disappointment. I relished every word of “Under the Tuscan Sun” but Frances needs to move on. I have.
Review by Lisa Kearns for Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life
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I received this uncorrected proof from the Amazon Vine program, and was looking forward to a book like Under the Tuscan Sun. However, in the 20 years since Frances Mayes bought Bramasole, she has become one of those expats who have lived somewhere long enough to imagine they are “native” and somehow superior to the tourists who visit. I was surprised when I began reading this book to realize that the innocence and sense of wonder from the first book was gone, and that she has basically a shallow life of gazing at paintings and attending five hour feasts with influential locals who have taken her into the bosom of their families.
Things I liked about her book:
- She still has a very colorful and visual way of describing the towns, food, gardens, and people of Tuscany. Her book is written to loosely follow the seasons, from the time they arrive in spring from the USA to when they shutter up the house and return to the USA in winter. One can almost smell the blooming flowers and dusty hot streets of Cortona from her writing.
- She included many recipes for authentic Italian food, several of which which I plan to try.
- I was pleased to read that so many Italians keep backyard orchards, gardens, rabbits and chickens. This is how “slow food” is meant to be – locally raised, freshly harvested and prepared at home. Our American fast food diet could learn a lot from this lifestyle.
- She obviously loves her grandson very much, and enjoys seeing the world through his eyes.
Things I disliked about her book:
- Luca Signorelli, the Renaissance painter, is mentioned on just about every page. At one point I felt like reminding the author that she has a husband already, and that Luca has been dead for 400 years. Try to move on.
- Wine, wine, wine. I know it’s an important part of Italian cuisine, but she goes way overboard on descriptions of wine at every meal. She tosses around the name, vintage and vintner of every wine she comes across as if anyone but a Tuscan would recognize them.
- She is somewhat pretentious in describing how she and her husband are invited to wine tastings at private vineyards, given use of private residences on their travels, and are dear friends of all the best people in town. She devoted a whole chapter to the time she was introduced to Robert Redford at some artsy fete and came to call him Bob.
- Mayes and her husband evidently do nothing except go to dinner parties, attend the opera and theater, stay in quaint little hotels in resort towns, pick herbs and vegetables from their garden (tended by a gardener), gaze at paintings in museums, meet friends for coffee in the piazza, and plan what to eat at the next meal.
- She considers herself a (celebrity) resident of Cortona, and yet not once does she mention doing any kind of community service or donating to local charities. Is there no orphanage, old age home or soup kitchen that could use some help? With her connections and money, she could do a lot of good. I guess that would interrupt her dinner party schedule.
- She mentions throughout the book that they have hired hands to tend the garden and orchard, to do landscaping and house repairs, and a woman to help cook and clean inside. I’m not sure how she can feel such a soul connection to Bramasole when she never gets her hands dirty taking care of it.
- One of her French expat friends from the early years in Cortona dies, and she laments being out of touch with him for so many years. She goes to the cemetery and roams around looking for his grave (while talking about Signorelli, naturally), but doesn’t find it. This one story was so telling to me. Had she not kept in touch with anyone from her early days, especially fellow expats? Nobody in town could tell her about his funeral or grave? Is she so immersed in being Tuscan that her old friends don’t matter?
I probably would have bought this book since I loved her first one so much, but I would have been disappointed in it. I have lived all over the world and have enjoyed learning about different foods, cultures, languages and religions. I hope I never came across to any other expats or the locals the way Frances Mayes come across to me – rich, pretentious and shallow.