BOOKS: Under The Tuscan Sun
It's truly unfortunate when you're halfway through writing a memoir and run out of things to say. Frances Mayes, a creative-writing professor from San Francisco, tells of life in Italy from a egotistical, liberal guilt-filled perspective. The first half of this book was fascinating, as she details each step in purchasing and fixing up a new house in Tuscany, a northern region of Italy containing the cities of Pisa and Florence. I loved reading every bit of the work it took the author and her husband to find and buy house, with very little grasp of the language. The work it took to update the plumbing and structure was tiring just to read. I have no idea what it is to live in a place that has been cultivated and improved for over two thousand years. Great stone walls were built, wells were dug, and whole rooms were completely refurbished. She all-too-briefly details the stresses of finding competent contractors and the peculiarities of European real estate, the main strengths of the memoir.
However, once they managed to get everything worked out, this book read more like a bad Christmas letter from my cousin Janet. Relatives and friends come and go, with only first names used to describe them, almost if we should know these people already. The second half is full of long, boring descriptions of Etruscan caves and piazza after piazza. Which brings up another point - consistency in explanation. Ms. Mayes likes to throw Italian words into her own language like we have any idea of the meaning. While she translates some and a few are obvious based on context, the majority of the expressions are just floated out there. Perhaps she is trying to put us in her shoes, but I'm not trying to live in a place where I barely understand the language. To top it off, the book concluded with a few charts to help convert old recipes to new kitchens (example: a "very hot" oven is about 450 degrees). But the book contained only a few pages of recipes to begin with, and the charts were certainly not necessary in understanding them.
Overall, a promising start, with a let-down of a second half. I wish that it didn't have such overwhelming pro-Italy biases throughout to give us a fair view of what it is like to summer in Tuscany.
It's truly unfortunate when you're halfway through writing a memoir and run out of things to say. Frances Mayes, a creative-writing professor from San Francisco, tells of life in Italy from a egotistical, liberal guilt-filled perspective. The first half of this book was fascinating, as she details each step in purchasing and fixing up a new house in Tuscany, a northern region of Italy containing the cities of Pisa and Florence. I loved reading every bit of the work it took the author and her husband to find and buy house, with very little grasp of the language. The work it took to update the plumbing and structure was tiring just to read. I have no idea what it is to live in a place that has been cultivated and improved for over two thousand years. Great stone walls were built, wells were dug, and whole rooms were completely refurbished. She all-too-briefly details the stresses of finding competent contractors and the peculiarities of European real estate, the main strengths of the memoir.
1 comment:
I think you've successfully talked me out of reading that. Sounds unexciting.
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