Product Description

Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites us back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food, there and throughout Italy.

A companion volume to Under the Tuscan Sun, Bella Tuscany is Frances Mayes's 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 her 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #103169 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-04
• Released on: 2000-04-04
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 7.96" h x .63" w x 5.25" l, .51 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Amazon.com
Work's still not completely finished on Bramasole, the Tuscan house that California-based poet and bestselling author Frances Mayes bought a decade ago and has been fixing up every summer since. Nevertheless, in Bella Tuscany, she goes out--in search of Italy and Italian life. The sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun is awash with sensual discovery, from Sicilian markets with "rainbows of shining fish on ice" to the aqueous dream of Venice "shimmering in the diluted sunlight." Wherever she is, Mayes celebrates everyday rituals, such as picking wild asparagus, "dark spears poking out of the dirt ... stalks as thin as yarn" and driving through country rains, as "the green landscape smears across the windshield" for buffalo mozzarella and demijohns of sfuso--bulk wine kept fresh with a slick of olive oil on top. Mayes also ventures into the world of the locals, some "bent as a comma" and others throwing six-hour communion feasts where half a dozen cooks in a barn continually send out heaping platters of pasta with wild boar sauce, roasted lamb, and even the thigh of a giant cow--wrapping up the festivities with honeyed vin santo, grappa, and dancing to the accordion. Capturing the details that enrich the commonplace, in Bella Tuscany Mayes appears less like a visitor and more like someone discovering in Tuscany a real home and a real life. --Melissa Rossi

From Library Journal
Writing again about Tuscany, Mayes continues to acquaint readers with the delights of Italy. This book follows Under the Tuscan Sun (LJ 9/1/96), Mayess popular account of falling in love with Tuscany and purchasing an old villa for her summer vacations. Now Mayes, on sabbatical from her teaching position in San Francisco, is experiencing Italy in the early spring with her friend and soon-to-be-spouse, Ed. Together they continue work on their house, selecting plants for the garden, pots for the piazza, and tiles for the bathroom. In between projects, they find time to explore regions beyond Tuscany, including Sicily and Venice. Mayes writes with a poets attention to sensuous detail, whether describing a six-course meal (she provides recipes), a fresco in a little-known church, or the challenges of learning Italian. She describes village life with all its warmth, friendliness, and individuality, in sharp contrast to the growing impersonality and homogeneity of America. Recommended for all public libraries.
-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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 Fellinis 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 unself-conscious. 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. To the accidental Italophile tourist, gathering water at a scenic town's small fountain may appear a quaint and rustic practice yet for the ancient women who must daily fetch and carry large jugs of water balanced atop their heads, the habit is laborious and boring, alleviated only slightly by the prospect of gossip. Yet we are finally won over by Mayes. Who could fail to affirm this poets 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 grapeused for Chianti, Brunello, and Vino Nobileas deriving from the "blood of Jove." Lovely, and no small consolation to anyone who's far from Tuscany. (Second serial to National Geographic Traveler; $175,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.