Under the Tuscan Sun

A New York Times Notable Book of 1997"This beautifully written memoir about taking chances, living in Italy. loving a house and, always, the pleasures of food, would make a perfect gift for a loved one.xa0xa0But it's so delicious, read it first yourself." --USA Today "Irresistible...a sensous book for a sensous countryside." --Minneapolis Star-Tribune “An intense celebration of what [Mayes] calls ‘the voluptuousness of Italian life’ . . . appealing and very vivid . . . [The] book seems like the kind of thing you’d tuck into a picnic basket on an August day . . . or better yet, keep handy on the bedside table in the depths of January.”— New York Times Book Review "Armchair travel at its most enticing." --Booklist “Mayes [has] perfect vision. . . . I do not doubt that centuries form now, whoever lives in Bramasole will one day uncover bits of pottery used at Mayes’ table. She has, by the sweat of her brow and the strength of her vision, become a layer in the history of this place.”-- Los Angeles Times From the Trade Paperback edition. Frances Mayes is the author of four books about Tuscany. The now-classic Under the Tuscan Sun –which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a Touchstone movie starring Diane Lane–was followed by Bella Tuscany and two illustrated books, In Tuscany and Bringing Tuscany Home. Mayes is also the author of the novel, Swan, six books of poetry, most recently Ex Voto , and The Discovery of Poetry. A frequent contributor to food and travel publications, she divides her time between North Carolina and Cortona, Italy. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. In 1990, our first summer here, I bought an oversized blank book with Florentine paper on the cover and blue leather binding.xa0xa0On the first page I wrote ITALY.xa0xa0The book looked as though it should have immortal poetry in it but I began with lists of wildflowers, lists of projects, new words, sketches of tile in Pompeii.xa0xa0I described rooms,xa0xa0trees, bird calls.xa0xa0I added planting advice, "Plant sunflowers when the moon crosses Libra," although I had no clue myself as to when that might be.xa0xa0I wrote about the people we met and the food we cooked.xa0xa0The book became a chronicle of our first four years here.xa0xa0Today it is stuffed with menus, postcards of paintings, a drawing of a floor plan of an abbey, Italian poems, and diagrams of the garden.xa0xa0Because it is thick, I still have room in it for a few more summers.xa0xa0Now the blue book has become Under the Tuscan Sun, a natural outgrowth of my first pleasures here.xa0xa0Restoring then improving the house, transforming an overgrown jungle into its proper function as a farm for olives and grapes, exploring the layers and layers of Tuscany and Umbria, cooking in a foreign kitchen and discovering the many links between food and the culture--these intense joys frame the deeper pleasure of learning to live another kind of life.xa0xa0To bury the grape tendril in such a way that it shoots out new growth I recognize easily as a metaphor for the way life must change from time to time if we are to go forward in our thinking. From the Trade Paperback edition. Read more