Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy - Couverture rigide

In 1990, our first summer here, I bought an oversized blank book with Florentine paper on the cover and blue leather binding.  On the first page I wrote ITALY.  The 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.  I described rooms,  trees, bird calls.  I added planting advice, "Plant sunflowers when the moon crosses Libra," although I had no clue myself as to when that might be.  I wrote about the people we met and the food we cooked.  The book became a chronicle of our first four years here.  Today it is stuffed with menus, postcards of paintings, a drawing of a floor plan of an abbey, Italian poems, and diagrams of the garden.  Because it is thick, I still have room in it for a few more summers.  Now the blue book has become Under the Tuscan Sun, a natural outgrowth of my first pleasures here.  Restoring 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.  To 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.
    

"Lyrically written and beguiling... What makes it special is the sustained note of joy in it; joy in the beauty of the Tuscan countryside, the sights and sounds of daily life, the physical labour involved in the restoration of this 200-year-old villa and the five acres of land that go with it" (Sunday Times)

"Like many delightful books, this account of restoring a Tuscan farmhouse and its land is hard to classify. The author is a poet, good at evoking atmosphere and describing place; a cook who collects appetizing winter and summer recipes; an academic who sets her new home in its Roman and Etruscan context. Above all, Mayes is an enthusiast for starting over. After the dissolution of a long marriage, she celebrates Christmas in Italy with her grown-up daughter and her new partner. 'Is this much happiness allowed?' she asks. You bet" (Mail on Sunday)

"Frances Mayes is a wonderful writer. She captures with exceptional poetry and vivacity the extraordinary beauty of Tuscany. She understands Tuscany like a person who was born and has lived here all her life" (Lorenza De'Medici)

"A wonderfully languid and evocative diary" (Independent)

"Stone by stone, Frances Mayes builds the story of what is not so much a love affair as an all-consuming passion. A glorious book - seductive, sensuous, beautifully crafted... '" (Elisabet Luard)