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Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life Review

Frances Mayes provides a welcome assault on the senses with her poetic and lyrical descriptions of every day life in Tuscany . Her words create unforgettable visual, gustatory, cultural and aural imagery making the reader desire to experience the author's lifestyle firsthand. For those who are unfamiliar with her books, about twenty years ago this author bought an aging house that was in disrepair on an Etruscan mountainside overlooking the town of Cortona in Italy . The house had originally been built and owned by Francescan monks in the 1200s. She wrote her first book. "Under the Tuscan Sun" which was about the adventure of remodeling this house which she named "Bramasole" and getting used to living in Italy. It became a bestseller and was made into a film (by the same title) which starred academy award nominee Diane Lane . All of her books stand alone and can be read without knowing the contents of previous ones. Each is a "must read" for anyone interested in travelogues and the joys and challenges of living in a different culture.

This most current book provides new insights into living in a foreign land. It is filled with descriptions of neighbors, the local habit of passing time drinking coffee in the piazza and catching up with the latest gossip and news and other everyday happenings, such as what vegetables are growing in the garden, plus there are road trips to nearby towns and seaports along with some outstanding recipes, for example, a mouth watering kale, white bean and sausage soup and an out-of-this world delicious sounding seafood stew. The reader becomes fascinated by the personalities of the neighbors and the seasonal changes which bring new culinary delights to the table. Additionally, the author delights in trying out local wines and describes trips to wineries of the region. Of note, the author shares a unique clash of cultures when she started a petition against building a swimming pool at the end of a historical road that led to a mountainside. To her surprise, few locals supported her publicly in this endeavor although they privately and personally shared her viewpoint on the subject. The author discovered an uniquely Italian way of handling conflict which resulted in a personal threat to her and her family. It nearly made her rethink her decision to live in Italy but fortunately, the matter was not as serious as it originally appeared. This story adds a dimension of reality to the book which makes it all the more palpable and honest.

Frances Mayes and her husband Ed are now well established residents of Italy and are welcomed by both local Italians and many part-time residents who come from such places as the US , Britain and France to enjoy the dramatic landscapes and unrivaled culinary and cultural delights of the region. They return to Italy several times a year for 3 - 4 months at a time from North Carolina where they live in the US. I was pleased to learn the author has friends from Tampa, FL who also own homes in her Italian locale and that the author had contemplated retiring to Sarasota, FL, both cities with which I am familiar.

In this book, the author does an excellent job of introducing the reader to Luca Signorelli a Renaissance painter who was born in Cortona , Italy . She enjoys discovering his paintings in churches on her many excursions to local cities and towns. She describes his most famous paintings and style of art in such a manner that the reader wants to view them in the original setting, the churches where they are displayed. This book is a gem on so many levels that it is impossible to describe the enormous impact it leaves on the reader who is given a view into the rich historical, artistic, culinary, vinticulture and every day life of modern Italy where the old and new live intertwined side by side with minimal conflict. Erika Borsos [pepper flower]

Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life Feature

ISBN13: 9780767929820
Condition: New
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Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life Overview

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.

Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life Specifications

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.

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Customer Reviews

not worth reading - jemtown -
I have read all of Frances Mayes books about Italy and in particular Cortona. This book just fell flat. She seemed to be rambling and had no focus except for the chapters about the Luca Signorella trail. The writing itself is not at all comparable to Under the Tuscan Sun. I would never had wanted to go to Italy if I had read this book. She knows a lot of people in Cortona, but we never find out anything really important about them. I did finish the book, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I borrowed it from a friend.

More Tuscany: the Piazza, Recipes, and Art - Keith E. Webb - Singapore
Like many people, Tuscany captured my heart and imagination years ago. Frances Mayes is one of a thousand expatriates who bought an old farmhouse, restored it and lived to write about it. With one exception, she's by far the most popular contemporary writer on Tuscany.

Her first book on the subject, Under the Tuscan Sun, was a big hit, which she followed up with other "Tuscany" books. Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life is her latest offering. Filled with vivid imagery of life in Tuscany, Mayes takes the commonplace flower, grassy field, and loaf of bread and turns it into something magical. In this book Mayes tells of chance encounters, shopping in the piazza, and dinner parties. She shares her recipes for a dozen Italian dishes, some of which I recreated at home. All was not rosebuds and vino for Mayes in her twenty years in Tuscany, as she relates in a darker tale first revealed here.

The book follows life in Tuscany through each season of the year. Built around the quirky country folk, day trips outside Cortona to track down the under-appreciated art of Renaissance painter Luca Signorelli, and challenges of rebuilding an ancient farmhouse.

If you appreciate gardens, Italian cooking, and Tuscan scenery, then stop and smell the roses with Every Day in Tuscany. I came away with a renewed appreciation of the simple pleasures and beauty that surrounds me, where I live. Although, in my mind's eye I see another trip to Tuscany on the horizon.

Seasonings lacked pizzazz - J. Offenbach - N VA
It's been years since I visited Tuscany and unfortunately, my travel taste buds were not stimulated much by Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life. Perhaps it is the season of my own life that taints my perspective, but Mayes' love affair with Tuscany has left me wanting. Although the highlight for me was the recipes, it's far from the top of my culinary list. As it was rather rambling in format, perhaps the book would be appealing to blog followers.

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Wednesday, September 8, 2010