The Nile on eBay Bella Tuscany by Frances Mayes
Continuing Mayes's account of her enchanting, ever-evolving life in Italy, "Bella Tuscany" presents the author truly at home as she invites readers back to savor more friendship, festivity, and food. Filled with recipes from her Tuscan kitchen and written in the sensuous prose that has become her hallmark, "Bella Tuscany" celebrates life's seasons of renewed possibility.
FORMATPaperback LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description
Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites readers back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy.Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to experience the pleasures of primavera, an Italian spring. A sabbatical from teaching in San Francisco allowed her to return to Cortona—and her beloved house, Bramasole—just as the first green appeared on the rocky hillsides.Bella Tuscany, a companion volume to Under the Tuscan Sun, is her passionate and lyrical account of her continuing love affair with Italy. Now truly at home there, Mayes writes of her deepening connection to the land, her flourishing friendships with local people, the joys of art, food, and wine, and the rewards and occasional heartbreaks of her villa's ongoing restoration. It is also a memoir of a season of change, and of renewed possibility. As spring becomes summer she revives Bramasole's lush gardens, meets the challenges of learning a new language, tours regions from Sicily to the Veneto, and faces transitions in her family life.Filled with recipes from her Tuscan kitchen and written in the sensuous and evocative prose that has become her hallmark, Bella Tuscany is a celebration of the sweet life in Italy.
Author Biography
Frances Mayes is the author of the now-classic Under the Tuscan Sun, which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a Touchstone movie starring Diane Lane. Other international bestsellers include: Bella Tuscany, Everyday in Tuscany, A Year in the World, and three illustrated books: In Tuscany, Bringing Tuscany Home, and The Tuscan Sun Cookbook. She is also the author of two novels, Swan and Women in Sunlight. She has written six books of poetry and The Discovery of Poetry. The most recent books are See You in the Piazza and Always Italy. Her books have been translated into more than fifty languages.
Review
"A love letter to Italy written in precise and passionate language of near poetic density...A book to treasure, as the author so clearly treasures the life she engraves on our hearts."--Susan Jacoby, Newsday"Fall in love again with the charming people and countryside of Cortona in this evocative follow-up to Under the Tuscan Sun."--People"Mayes displays a gift for conveying everyday life through her writing...Perfect for those with the yen but not the means for a second home...Mayes presents a simpler, less frantic version of how to live one's life."--USA Today"Frances Mayes is, before all else, a wonderful writer...She never loses sight of the fact that millenniums-old Tuscany, with its immemorial customs and folkways, is not to be domesticated or made familiar. Her Italy remains intransigently foreign, exotic, a continuing revelation of strangeness and unexpected beauties."--Chicago Tribune
Review Quote
"A love letter to Italy written in precise and passionate language of near poetic density...A book to treasure, as the author so clearly treasures the life she engraves on our hearts." --Susan Jacoby,Newsday "Fall in love again with the charming people and countryside of Cortona in this evocative follow-up toUnder the Tuscan Sun." --People "Mayes displays a gift for conveying everyday life through her writing...Perfect for those with the yen but not the means for a second home...Mayes presents a simpler, less frantic version of how to live one's life." --USA Today "Frances Mayes is, before all else, a wonderful writer...She never loses sight of the fact that millenniums-old Tuscany, with its immemorial customs and folkways, is not to be domesticated or made familiar.
Description for Reading Group Guide
The questions that follow are intended to enhance your reading group's discussion, and we hope that they will also help you discover new and personal lines of inquiry into this wonderful memoir of friendships, festivity, and food in Italy.
Discussion Question for Reading Group Guide
1. Mayes writes, "It can be dangerous to travel. A strong reflecting light is cast back on ''real life,'' sometimes a disquieting experience." What does she mean? How does travel change your perception of yourself? Has a hidden piece of your identity ever been revealed to you through travel? 2. While in Sicily, Mayes connects existential thoughts of death with traveling. "Why am I here where I don''t belong? What is this alient place? I fell I''m in a strange afterlife, a haint blowing with the winds. I suspect the subtext to this displacement is the dread of death. Who and where are you when you are no one?" Do these thoughts of displacement enter your mind when you travel? Do you think they are connected to a fear of death? 3. How is Mayes''s trip to Sicily different from her travels in Tuscany and the Veneto? What are specific traits of the Sicilian character? What in Sicily''s history can account for these traits? Are there regional differences in your own country that are as vivid? 4. At one of the many extravagant feasts he attends throughout the book, Ed remarks, speaking of the bitter after-dinner drinks called amari, "Italians seem to have acquired more tastes than many of us." Do you agree? Why might that be the case? How is Italy''s relationship to food different from that of other countries? 5. On a number of occasions, Mayes describes the many elaborate gestures Italians have for expressing how good food is. Do any of them make sense to you? How many gestures do you have to show your enjoyment of food? How often do you use these gestures? What does it mean to frequently express your appreciation of food through physical gestures? What does that say about a culture? 6. Why do you think Mayes includes recipes in her book? What is the effect of the recipes on you, the reader? Does it bring her story more alive? If so, how? Do you intend to make any of the dishes? Which ones? Is your interest in these specific dishes connected to Mayes''s narrative? 7. Throughout her travels in Italy, Mayes frequently encounters ancient Roman and Etruscan monuments. How does the historical scope of Italy change her perception of time? Does it change yours just by reading about the ancient landscape? How do you think growing up, surrounded by so much ancient history, would change a person? Do you see those differences in the Italians that Mayes encounters? How do these Italians feel about their heritage? 8. Mayes writes of the balance between "ambition, solitude, stimulation, adventure...What is replenishing? What is depleting? What takes? What gives? What wrings you out and, truly, what rinses you with happiness?" Do you think restoring Bramasole in the summers and teaching the rest of the year in San Francisco is a good balance? What balance have you struck? Are you content with it? 9. What is the relationship of the foraging woman, who used to work at Bramasole, to the estate now? Is she trespassing when she picks their fruits and mushrooms? How is the sense of land ownership profoundly different in Tuscany than in Mayes''s native California? 10. Mayes writes, "The garden, I begin to see, is a place where I can give memory a location and season in which to remain alive...Scents operate like music and poetry, stirring up wordless feelings that rush through the body, not as cognitive thoughts but as a surge of lymphatic tide." What do your plants or garden mean to you? Is your garden a repository of memories of places, events, or loved ones? Do you use scents to remember? 11. Quoting a haiku from Basho, Mayes writes, "Deep Autumn,My neighbor, howDoes he live, I wonder?" Why do you think Mayes travels? Why do you? Does your urge to travel change as you get older? What inspires you to leave your home and wander? 12. What is the relationship Italians have with art? How does Mayes attempt to emulate that relationship? What role does art play in your day-to-day life? How do you access art in your everyday existence? 13. How is Mayes''s rose garden in conflict with Anselmo''s olive trees? Why do you think the olive trees are so important to Anselmo? Is there a larger issue at stake here? 14. Mayes writes that, "Multilingual friends assure me that a new personality emerges when one acquires a new language." Have you experienced that, or seen it in others? Do you see a change in Mayes over the course of her year spent on sabbatical in Tuscany? 15. Mayes asks, "What can we take back [from Tuscany] to our lives in the new house [in California]? What accounts for the dramatic shift in our minds and bodies when we live [in Tuscany]?" How do you incorporate life lessons you''ve learned in your travels, or while on vacation? How do you infuse your daily working life with the spirit of Tuscany? What specific, concrete changes in your life did BELLA TUSCANY inspire? 16. Why do you think Mayes was unable to recognize her ex-husband at the rehearsal dinner fo their daughter''s marriage? Has your world ever been so transformed as to make the past unrecognizable? 17. BELLA TUSCANY brings the Tuscan countryside so vividly to life. As you journey through Tuscany with Mayes, through a year of changing seasons, what specific images have left an indelible imprint on your mind? Have you been to Tuscany? Do you plan on returning? 18. Bramasole is in perpetual need of repair. Mayes''s restoration work will never end. Would she have been better off buying a more modern villa? What is her attraction to dilapidated buildings? Do you share it? If you restore your own house, does it change your relationship to it? How so?
Excerpt from Book
Primavera Fortunate that cypress shadows fall in wide bands across the sunlit road; fortunate that on the first day back in Cortona I see a carpenter carrying boards, his tabby cat balanced on his shoulders, tail straight up, riding like a surfer. The carpenter tosses the wood on sawhorses and begins to whistle. The cat bends and leans as he moves--a working cat. I watch for a few moments then walk on into town for a cappuccino. Thank you, I think. Fortunate that yellow blazes of forsythia light the hills. After seven summers on this terraced land, Ed and I feel a rush of happiness on turning the front-door key. I''m enchanted by the rounded Apennines, this quirky house that takes in the sun, and the daily rhythms of life in a Tuscan hilltown. He''s far in love with the land. By now he knows the habits of every olive tree. Fortunate. Otherwise, we might want to post a For Sale sign on the gate ten minutes after arrival because neither well pump is working: a grinding noise in the switch for the old well, a buzz for the new well. We peer into the cistern--at least there''s enough water for a few days. When the pump went down into the new well six years ago, I never expected to see it again. Now, on our first morning, three plumbers are hauling up ropes, their heads down the well. It''s a beast. Then Giacomo stands on the well wall, the others beside him. They''re counting, uno, due, tre, giving the heave-ho. Soon they''re stripped to their pants, cursing and laughing. Up it comes, and Giacomo almost falls backward. They carry it to the truck. The old well''s pump--replaced just last year--they yank out easily. The contraption comes up with fig roots dangling and is pronounced dead on arrival. Why? They begin to dig for wires. By noon, the walkway is torn up, the lawn is carved into ditches and the mystery is solved. Mice have eaten the insulation around the wires. Why would they eat plastic when they can eat hazelnuts and almonds? The pumps have shorted out. The new well''s pump, it turns out, is also dead. Fizzled. Kaput. By the third day, we have new pumps, new wires sealed with silicone, which the original electrician neglected to do, lots of water, a patched walkway, and a depleted bank account. If mice eat plastic, what''s to keep them from eating silicone? Fortunate that we are served pheasant with roasted potatoes for dinner at the trattoria up the mountain, and that the early March dark spills forth a million twirling stars, because otherwise Ed''s scrawled list might seem daunting: new grass, prune trees, build a shed for tools, remodel two old bathrooms, new septic system, paint shutters, buy desk and something with space to hang clothes, plant trees, extend garden. Primo Bianchi, a stonemason who has done extensive work here during our restoration, arrives to discuss the projects. He can start in July. "I was on your roof in January," he tells us. "Your friend Donatella called and said there was a leak." We''ve seen the dripping stain on the yellow wall of my study. "It was the wind. You lost some tiles. When I was working in the afternoon, the wind came again and blew down my ladder." "Oh, no!" He laughs, pointing both forefingers at the ground, that gesture meaning Let it not happen here. Dark comes early in winter. I imagine him, his back against the chimney, sitting on the cold tiles, his pale blue eyes squinting at the road below, the wind standing his hair on end. "I waited. No one came by. Then a car but he did not hear me. After perhaps two hours a woman walked by and I called for help. This house was empty so long--she thought I was a spirit and let out a scream when she saw me waving on the roof. You need to think of a new roof soon." He walks off a measurement of pipes we''ll need for the new drainage system. It looks like a plan for trench warfare. "Hurry and order the furnishings for the bathrooms if you want everything here by July." Fortunate that the place is restored--central heating, new doors, finished kitchen, one lovely bath, refinished beams, barrels of new paint, rebuilt stone walls, refitted cantina for oil and wine. Otherwise, these new projects might seem like restoration itself. "You may think you''re through with old houses," Primo tells us, "but they are never through with you." Soft spring air, an elixir of joy simply to breathe in and out. Quick streams are opening on the terraces. I take off my shoes and let the cold, cold water bathe my feet. The rocky hillsides sprout ferns, glossy green. A new lizard runs across my toes and I feel the clutch of the tiny feet. Primavera, first green, and the wet grasses shine. A European spring, my first. I only have read of Proust''s chestnuts flowering, Nabokov''s linden lanes, Colette''s double-red violets. But no one ever told me about quince, their sudden pink flares against stone walls. No one said the spring winds can turn murderous. No one mentioned lilac, and somehow during my summers in Italy, I never noticed the heart-shaped leaves. Now I see the Tuscan hills spattered with enormous white or smoky-lavender bushes. Near our house, a hedge of lilac leads to an abandoned farm, and in the rain I cut wet armfuls to fill all my pitchers and vases. More than any flower, the mesmerizing perfume seems to be the very scent of memory, hauling me back to college in Virginia and my first breath of lilac, which didn''t grow in the warm latitude of my childhood home in Georgia. I remember thinking, How could I have lived eighteen years without knowing this? I had a terrible crush on my philosophy professor, married with three children, and over and over I played Harry Bellafonte, Green grow the lilacs all sparkling with dew. My dorm window overlooked the James River through a tangle of brush. Springtime is here and it''s here without you. That my professor wore drip-dry shirts I crassly blamed on his wife; that he combed a long strand of hair over his pate I tried to ignore. Violets, the suffocatingly sweet-scented ones, bloom along the spontaneous springs. Naturalized double daffodils, tromboni in Italian, mass along the terrace edges. The faint mists of hawthorn ( biancospino, white thorn, or, locally, topospino, mouse-pricker) drift along the upper terraces and, below, the fruit trees continue to outdo themselves. We won''t mow--the luxurious grass is overtaken by white camomile and marguerites. What is this happiness that keeps coming in waves? Time, the gift of time, the free running of time--and Italy owns so much of it. Being from the South, I''m used to people talking about The War Between the States as though it were a decade ago. In the South the long dead and buried are talked about, too. Sometimes I thought Mother Mayes would come walking in the door again, bringing back her powdery lavender scent, her spongy body I could feel beneath the voile print dress. Here, it''s Hannibal. Hannibal, who passed this way and fought the Roman Flaminio in 217 B.C. All the hilltowns celebrate jousts or weddings or battles which occurred hundreds of years ago. Maybe having so much time behind them contributes to the different sense I absorb in Italy. Gradually, I fall into time. At home in California, I operate against time. My agenda, stuffed with notes and business cards, is always with me, each day scribbled with appointments. Sometimes when I look at the week coming up, I know that I simply have to walk through it. To be that booked-up, blocked-in feels depleting. When I make the weekly list of what needs to be accomplished, I know I''ll be running double-time to catch up. I don''t have time to see my friends and sometimes when I do, I''m hoping to cut it short because I need to get back to work. I read about an American doctor who pumps her breasts in freeway traffic so she can continue to breast-feed her baby and still keep up with her medical practice. An ad in The Wall Street Journal offered engagement rings by telephone for couples who don''t have time to shop. Am I that bad? Sabbatical, what a civilized idea. All jobs should have them. This year both Ed and I have this blessed time-out, which, combined with summer vacation, gives us the chance to spend six months in Italy. Since this is my first leave in twenty years of teaching, I want to bask in every day. To wake up--without having to go anywhere--and wander the terraces to see what is coming into bloom seems like paradiso. Soon the wild irises will open. Their pointy, bruise-blue heads seem to push up taller as I watch. Narcissi, just on the verge of glory, run rampant. Already, yellow light emanates from the buds. I am, every day, shocked by something new and shocked that this house and land, which I thought I knew from my summers and Decembers, continue to astound me. We stepped off the plane in Florence on March 15 to seventy-degree weather and it has held, except for occasional blasts of wind. Now, the pears are turning from flower to leaf. As white petals drop or flurry--I remember hearing "peach-blow" as a child--new leaves shoot out with force. That energy has swollen the limbs of all the old fig trees and the branches of the spindly pomegranate we have just planted. Happiness? The color of it must be spring green, impossible to describe until I see a just-hatched lizard sunning on a stone. That color, the glowing green lizard skin, repeats in every new leaf. "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower . . ." Dylan Thomas wrote. "Fuse" and "force" are excellent word choices--the regenerative power of nature explodes in every weed, stalk, branch. Working in the mild sun, I feel the green fu
Details ISBN076790284X Author Frances Mayes Short Title BELLA TUSCANY Pages 304 Language English ISBN-10 076790284X ISBN-13 9780767902847 Media Book Format Paperback Year 2000 Residence San Francisco, CA DEWEY B Subtitle The Sweet Life in Italy DOI 10.1604/9780767902847 Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2000-04-04 NZ Release Date 2000-04-04 US Release Date 2000-04-04 UK Release Date 2000-04-04 Publication Date 2000-04-04 Imprint Crown Publishing Group Audience General Publisher Crown Publishing Group (NY) We've got this
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