| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9780767916066 | | Publisher: Broadway Books | | Publish Date: 8/1/2003 | | Buy.com Sku: 33850411 | | Item#: BR34JC | | Buy.com Sales Rank: 150889 | | Dimensions (in Inches) 8H x 5.5L x 0.75T | | Pages: 336 |
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| | | | "I am about to buy a house in a foreign country. A house with the beautiful name of Bramasole..." (from the first line) "BRAMARE: (ARCHAIC) TO YEARN FOR: I am about to buy a house in a foreign country. A house with the beautiful name of Bramasole. It is tall, square, and apricot-colored with faded green shutters, ancient tile roof, and an iron balcony on the second level, where ladies might have sat with their fans to watch some spectacle below. But below, overgrown briars, tangles of roses, and knee-high weeds run rampant. The balcony faces southeast, looking into a deep valley, then into the Tuscan Apennines. When it rains or when the light changes, the facade of the house turns gold, sienna, ocher; a previous scarlet paint job seeps through in rosy spots like a box of crayons left to melt in the sun. In places where the stucco has fallen away, rugged stone shows what the exterior once was. The house rises above a strada bianca, a road white with pebbles, on a terraced slab of hillside covered with fruit and olive trees. Bramasole: from bramare, to yearn for, and sole, sun: something that yearns for the sun, and yes, I do..." Now in paperback, the #1 "San Francisco Chronicle" bestseller that is an enchanting and lyrical look at the life, the traditions, and the cuisine of Tuscany, in the spirit of Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence."
Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos beneath the whitewash in her dining room, a vineyard under wildly overgrown brambles in the garden, and, in the nearby hill towns, vibrant markets and delightful people. In "Under the Tuscan Sun," she brings the lyrical voice of a poet, the eye of a seasoned traveler, and the discerning palate of a cook and food writer to invite readers to explore the pleasures of Italian life and to feast at her table.
Annotation:
Frances Mayes, a gourmet cook, travel writer, and poet, bought herself a crumbling 17-room villa in the Italian countryside. It changed her life and renewed her spirit. Her immensely appealing chronicle of the experience, and of her romantic relationship with the man she eventually married, comes complete with recipes from the region. The book became a bestseller and was made into a 2003 movie starring Diane Lane.
| PraiseNew York Times Book Review
"[A] romance for people who'd rather read M.F.K. Fisher than Barbara Cartland....Casual and conversational, her chapters are filled with craftsmen and cooks, with exploratory jaunts into the countryside--but what they all boil down to is an intense celebration of what she calls 'the voluptuousness of Italian life'....Despite a few shadows, Ms. Mayes's mood is usually sunny, warmed by her generosity." - Alida Becker 11/17/1996San Francisco Chronicle
"Somehow, this is a narrative at once joyful and full of common sense, a balance that few other writers have struck so perfectly. It's...honest and true, and vividly captures a sense of place." - Brian St. Pierre 11/10/1996 |
| | Read A Chapter |
Chapter One 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 TuClick to read more... Chapter One 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.
Excerpted from Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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