Book Reviews
Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes memoir of buying, renovating and settling into an abandoned villa on the outskirts of Cortona, Italy, [is] what the novelist Laurie Colwin used to call a domestic sensualist. Ms. Mayes will tell you all about making olive oil and rebuilding an Etruscan wall, but you'll never confuse her with Martha Stewart. (One of the things she likes about Italy is that it's ''the only place in the world I've ever taken a nap at nine in the morning.'') She'll tell you lots of charming stories about the locals, but she won't make you wonder—as I sometimes do, reading Peter Mayle— what she'd say about you behind your back. She'll give you a recipe for marmalade from Elizabeth David, one of the doyennes of the cookery business, but add that she probably ''just dishes it up into the jars'' and ''then forgets it, scraping off mold with impunity before spreading some on her toast"... An intense celebration of what [Mayes] calls "the voluptuousness of Italian life"
Alida Becker - New York Times
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. But it's so delicious, read it first yourself.
USA Today
A poet, food-and-travel writer, Italophile and chair of the creative writing department at San Francisco State University, Mayes is a fine wordsmith and an exemplary companion whose delight in a brick floor she has just waxed is as contagious as her pleasure in the landscape, architecture and life of the village.
Publishers Weekly
Armchair travel at its most enticing. Can we really blame ourselves for wanting to strap Mayes down in some ratty armchair while we go live in her farmhouse.
Booklist