Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, Cookbooks, Food & Wine, Reference, Travel
Book Type: Paperback
Author:
Genres: Biographies & Memoirs, Cookbooks, Food & Wine, Reference, Travel
Book Type: Paperback
Karen U. (editorgrrl) reviewed on + 255 more book reviews
Never read Under the Tuscan Sun, but I saw the 2003 movie starring Diane Lane.
From Kirkus Reviews
Yes, la dolce vita, but only for some. In the nearly 40 years since Fellini's film first ushered the expression into our lexicon, said vita has been drained of all its original sardonic content, its biting irony, and its social criticism. This sequel to Mayes's bestselling Under the Tuscan Sun, about her second home and life reborn in Tuscany, doesn't preserve Fellini's spirit either, though her account is inevitably charming. Sometimes, too, a tad annoying. For the author does occasionally come off (along with her husband) as cantankerous or supremely unselfconscious. Not appreciating the cold spring rains in Tuscany, for instance, the lucky pair decides, on a whim, to fly to balmy Palermo; on arriving in a hotel room without a view of that city's justly famous palm trees, gli Americani just march down to the lobby and demand one. Yet we are finally won over by Mayes. Who could fail to affirm this poet's lush descriptions of the rolling Tuscan hills, with their timeless olive trees and patient oxen? Equally beautiful are Mayes's evocations of Italians as sincere and welcoming. She realizes that, despite their fame for sweets, the natives actually enjoy foods with a bitter taste or, as husband Ed remarks, they "seem to have acquired more tastes than many of us." Other factual tidbits include a survey of the etymology of the Sangiovese grape--used for Chianti, Brunello, and Vino Nobile--as deriving from the "blood of love." Lovely, and no small consolation to anyone who's far from Tuscany.
From Kirkus Reviews
Yes, la dolce vita, but only for some. In the nearly 40 years since Fellini's film first ushered the expression into our lexicon, said vita has been drained of all its original sardonic content, its biting irony, and its social criticism. This sequel to Mayes's bestselling Under the Tuscan Sun, about her second home and life reborn in Tuscany, doesn't preserve Fellini's spirit either, though her account is inevitably charming. Sometimes, too, a tad annoying. For the author does occasionally come off (along with her husband) as cantankerous or supremely unselfconscious. Not appreciating the cold spring rains in Tuscany, for instance, the lucky pair decides, on a whim, to fly to balmy Palermo; on arriving in a hotel room without a view of that city's justly famous palm trees, gli Americani just march down to the lobby and demand one. Yet we are finally won over by Mayes. Who could fail to affirm this poet's lush descriptions of the rolling Tuscan hills, with their timeless olive trees and patient oxen? Equally beautiful are Mayes's evocations of Italians as sincere and welcoming. She realizes that, despite their fame for sweets, the natives actually enjoy foods with a bitter taste or, as husband Ed remarks, they "seem to have acquired more tastes than many of us." Other factual tidbits include a survey of the etymology of the Sangiovese grape--used for Chianti, Brunello, and Vino Nobile--as deriving from the "blood of love." Lovely, and no small consolation to anyone who's far from Tuscany.
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