Published by Bantam, 2000, softcover, 319 pages, condition: new.
Continuing Frances Mayes' account of her love affair with Italy, "Bella Tuscany" presents the author now truly at home there, meeting the challenges of learning a new language and touring regions outside Tuscany, including castle towns, fishing villages, and islands. With fresh adventures and updates on the characters introduced in "Under the Tuscan Sun", Mayes also explores new themes in this wondrous corner of the world, delving into gardening, wine-making, and the experience of primavera - a season of renewed possibility. And Mayes reveals more simple pleasures from her Tuscan kitchen in a section devoted to recipes. In the sensuous, vivid prose that has become her hallmark, "Bella Tuscany" celebrates Mayes' deepening connection to the land and her flourishing friendships in a newfound haven of idyllic living.
If you want to be transported and transformed this summer, read this book. Frances Mayes lulls you into the restorative cycle of Italian life. Perched in her idyllic villa, she journals sparsely with a writers mind and a food-lovers heart. She effortlessly recreates the tastes, sights, sounds, and characters of Tuscany in this follow up to her successful novel-turned-film, Under the Tuscan Sun. Frances and her husband are restoring an ancient farmhouse in the countryside, and throw themselves whole-heartedly into maintaining the villas authenticity, efficiency, and luxury. Mayes nurtures native wildflowers and noshes on local beans, while scouring pottery shops for serving dishes and barrels to make homemade limoncella. However, Mayes is an American undergoing an Italian education of sorts, and thus rightfully peppers the narrative with reflections and observations of an outsider looking into an existence she can never fully know. Their lives back in San Francisco call over and over again, and it is this external awareness that makes this book perfectly bittersweet and a comfort to all of us self-doubting ex-patriots at heart.
