Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life by Frances Mayes

Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life Reviews

• 
  Karen

  Oh. My. God. Beyond tedious. I can't even begin to describe how much I do not care about this book. It just doesn't flow. I really loved
  Under The Tuscan Sun. It had a focus and a purpose. But this thing is a collection of whining anecdotes and whatever else happened to pass through the author's mind at the time that should have been kept to herself. The writing style started to grate on my nerves and I was so distracted I couldn't get through one whole page. She's all over the place. The writing is so abstract I could barely tell what was going on. And it's titled Every Day In Tuscany, but a portion of it is about trips outside of Tuscany. Severely disappointed. Read it for the recipes, if at all.
• 
  Obsidian

  Updated as of May 6, 2021: Yeah. I can't really say much more than this which is this book dragged a lot still. I tried re-reading this and the last book I realized I still had the same issues in my re-read. I think that this book tried to do way too much. I forgot about the poetry and Mayes long obsession with finding out more about an artist that lived in their town of Cortana. What gets me is that this book feels very old. It was written in 1998 (published) but references 2010. And now in 2021 I wonder if the Mayes' still live part time in Italy. I wonder if they stayed in that country during COVID-19 and if they did, how did they and their friends fare? This book just had me wondering how they went on after that incident where they realized that the town of Cortana though it felt opened to them, really still saw them as outsiders for the most part even though they had lived in the country for 20 years at this point. The recipes still look very delicious though.
  
  Old Review:
  Well, this was disappointing. I haven't read it in years, and am now recalling why I haven't. I really loved Under the Tuscan Sun and this one was painful to get through. I kept falling asleep. Mayes makes the decision to write rambling passages in this one and includes poetry and her musings on random things when she is supposed to be telling you about the days she spends in Tuscany starting in the Spring through the Summer. 
  
  It's been 20 years since Mayes and her husband Ed bought a house in Tuscany. They are now part of the town and have made friends. And though Mayes and Ed love returning to Italy every year, Bramasole is showing it's age. And  the world is changing now too (it's 1998 when this was published) with Mayes and her husband feeling the sting of the dropping dollar and having feelings about Bush in Iraq.
  
  The book is supposed to be following Mayes through the months in Tuscany, but honestly I couldn't get a handle on anything or anyone. Mayes jumps around a lot. She mentions people and then re-introduces them repeatedly through the book. The only thing she seems to do is drink wine, eat, and ramble around the mountainside. The first book got me because we had her discovering Italy and her home. We got to read about the renovations and how thoughtless some people were that were all cool we will come and visit you. The book flowed wonderfully. This one does not. At times I was so confused by what Mayes was saying and what she meant. I don't think it's that hard to tell a story from point A to point B, but this one couldn't do it.
  
  The setting of Tuscany feels darker in this one too. Tuscany is changing with people wanting to modernize near them (a community pool is proposed to go in nearby Mayes and others homes) and with Mayes and her husband trying to get a petition going against it, Mayes realizes how she still doesn't understand Italy as much as she thought she did. With her and her husband being targeted it causes her to compare Italy to America and I have no idea where she was going with this. This is the only part of the book that felt coherent to me. You can feel Mayes outrage and her shock she was not beloved by everyone like she thought. Her writing a rebuttal to a man who wrote one about her and her refusing to acknowledge him when she saw him around town lets you see that she thinks she's really hurting the guy. 
  
  The only parts I really liked were the recipes. I am interested in trying some of them out.
  
  The book ends with Mayes and her husband deciding to not change their home because it will lose it's heart. Even though they admit they just don't have the money for it due to their investments losing money every day. 
• 
  Ensiform

  Not a cohesive memoir so much as a personal diary of the author’s time in Tuscany, now twenty years on since her bestseller. Perhaps because this is her fourth volume of Tuscan ramblings (I have not read anything else by her), she does not take the time to introduce characters but rather just drops their names – is Ed her second husband? Third? Common-law live-in partner? Is her grandchild’s mother her daughter, or Ed’s, or what? Who are all these neighbors, and their relation to her? It’s not terribly important, perhaps, but a nagging distraction for those who have just picked up this one book. In a similar vein, she drops the names of such things as “DOC wines” without explaining that this is an official quality assurance label. In this sense the book is, ironically, very off-putting and exclusionary, since she is trying to write as if composing letters to close friends. It’s very poetic, adjective-drenched, sensual language, light on events and drama, and even lighter on chronological sense. It’s predominately the scents of food and vibrant colorful flowers and thick soft warm cloths, mountains and wooden furniture and Renaissance paintings and fireside sing-alongs.
  
  There is a brief point at which something approaching a conflict of interest or drama approaches. She is caught up in local politics, and – and after a build-up that makes it seem as if a loved one will be tortured in front of her – she relates a slightly unpleasant event that shook her up a bit. Her fear soon passes without further incident, as does her telling of it, and after a few pages musing on the bad things that happened to people she’s known, it’s off again with menus, museum tours, shops, flowers, page after page after page about paintings, apparently cribbed from museum tour guides or books on art history – to me the absolute pinnacle of boring reading. All this, with no particular progression or thought to build up a coherent narrative journey: near the very end of the book is when she chooses to ramble about her struggles with the Italian language – why then? – and of course then switches gears abruptly, droning about what might have been if she’d stayed in Georgia – which can be of no interest to anyone but herself. All this museum-visiting and garden-planting and wine-tasting and restaurant-lingering and pasta-making and house-renovating is perhaps fascinating stuff to those who read to live vicariously, but it is not for me. In the end, Mayes’ personal prose style says very little about Tuscany itself, and quite a lot about what a wealthy woman writer from Georgia enjoys doing all day. That, to me, is not what travel writing is all about. The final chapter is pseudo-metaphysical pretentious nonsense (“is the universe – at some distance – shaped like the bones of a cranium?”). Boring. Utterly boring.
• 
  Габриела Щинова

  "Писането е игра. Избираш си тема, след което започваш да я изучаваш и да разсъждаваш колкото може повече
  за нея. После отприщваш въображението Кутиите с писателски
  идеи ми напомнят за колекцията ми от кутии от пури, която пазех в шкафа за играчки. В една от тях кътах красиви
  отломки от стъкло. В други подреждах сбирката си от пощенски картички, хартиени кукли, моливи и мидени черупки.
  
  В днешната ми стая за игри, моя кабинет, обичам да трупам една върху друга
  различни възможности, надявайки се, че във взаимодействието им ще
  припламне нова енергия и ще лумне нещо ново. Може би някоя идея ще се кръстоса с друга и ще се
  хибридизира в неочаквана верига от мисли.
  
  Често цитирах на студентите си Езра Паунд: „Направете го ново“. Имал е предвид, че творецът трябва да се
  оттласне към творческото начало и същевременно да се оттласне от
  всичко, което е познато, възприето, очаквано. Да се търкулнеш като монета по добре изгладен улей, предлага
  комфорт, но така трудно можеш да надникнеш над ръба на
  вдлъбнатината, в която си попаднал.
  
  Съветът на Езра Паунд към поетите е да се откажат от познатите форми и
  познатия ритъм, да открият собствения си глас в нещо свежо и ново."
  
  "Вместо да се заобиколя с лавиците с книги, предпочитам да ида навън, където ме обгръщат по- деликатното
  присъствие на естрагона, седефчето, ма��очината, джоджена, лавандулата, сантолината, розите, а в нозете ми се е проснал следобедът, в който нямам
  какво друго да правя, освен да съзерцавам как трепкащите слънчеви лъчи падат на верев над долината.
  Полюшваща се маслинова клонка ме бръсва по шията.
  
  Тъкмо когато разгръщам книгата си, отвън долита: C’è nessuno? — „Има ли
  някого вкъщи?“. На портата се появява Киара и вдига усмихнато лице към мен. В ръка държи гевгир и тъй като е
  септември, зная, че в него носи къпини. Carpe diem. Carpe lucem. „Улови мига.Улови светлината.“
• 
  mwbham

  This is really only a 2.5 rating. It was, to my surprise, a disappointment to me. I always love her books and her story (especially after spending 4 days in Cortona a few years ago). The book was a bit like a journal - some longer pieces about life in Cortona, many short bits about travel to small Tuscany towns, some thoughts on her life now and before, much about food. It just didn't feel held together for me. I had to keep making myself work toward finishing it.
  
  My favorites were the pieces about restoring the new place across the valley from Cortona including their on-going battle with the wild boar. It made me grateful that we are only fighting off the deer, squirrels and rabbits. I always assumed when wild boar was listed on menus in Italy that it was really just commercial pork. But, apparently the wild boar are everywhere creating havoc in gardens and yards. Of course, I liked the writing about food.
• 
  Caroline

  Frances Mayes continues to mine the territory of her life in Italy in this follow-up to
  Under the Tuscan Sun. The Italy of Frances Mayes is an idealized fantasy, where every vista is breathtaking, every meal is delicious, and every stranger becomes a fast friend. There are endless hours for drinking cappuccino in the piazza, or lounging at dinners that last for 5 hours, or traveling to country towns to view frescoes, or strolling through fields foraging for wild strawberries. There's no real narrative here, just Mayes using her florid and fanciful prose to sketch impressions and scenes of her beyond-perfect Italian life. And without a story or something to care about, one tires quickly of her endless, breathless gushing. Suitable for Mayes and all-things-Italian fanatics only.
• 
  Terri

  Life in Italy, Tuscany, no less, seems like an idyllic, simple life, visiting with friends in the piazza over a nice hot cup of coffee that is handed to you for free because you are that gosh darn likeable for an American. In fact, Mayes is so incredible that all the town knows her and loves her and fauns all over her... according to her.
  
  This is the life that Frances Mayes lives over there in Europe, Italy, Tuscany for Pete sake, with her husband Ed. Well, they kind of live there except when they're living in their other house in North Carolina. But Mayes speaks Italian so she's almost a native to the area, as opposed to those foppish American tourists who come to Italy visiting loudly.
  
  So, yah, Frances Mayes is so full of herself and her quaint life there in Italy where she can afford to live half the year, live like the locals in that understated rich way that she just fits in so nicely. All those details are available to you, if you care.
  
  Have you read Eat, Pray Love? This is similar. The author is so taken with herself and her life and her ideas and her everything that it gets to be b-o-r-i-n-g. If you liked Eat, Pray, Love you will like this book as well. If you like reading from an author who is just sure you will want to know all the picayune details of her way more scintillating life than your boring old American one, you will like this book. And if you especially like to read about how way better the Europeans are than those droll Americans, this is a definite 'must read.'
  
  So, I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because I liked the aioli recipe and the vanilla sauce recipe.
• 
  Suzanne

  "Seasons of an Italian Life" is a beautifully written journal by Frances Mayes of her life in Italy, her vacation refuge over the last 20+ years. Sharing this life with her husband, her daughter and grandchild clearly bring Ms. Mayes great joy. The Italy of Frances Mayes fills our senses with images of beauty, whether in the form of frescoes and Renaissance art, vases brimming with freshly picked flowers, tables laden with plates of delicious local vegetables, meats and cheeses and, of course, the wine. Mayes' ability to create such lush visual images through the careful construction of her sentences is why so many of us love to read her books. Hers is a life well-lived. The potential reader should know that there is no plot or storyline to this particular book. Instead, it reads as an authentic private journal written by an artist who sees the world as a continually changing place of beauty filled with endless possibilities.
  
• 
  Kathryn Parmeter

  Oh. My. God.
  
  Will something PLEASE HAPPEN in this story before I gnaw off my HEAD??????
  
  How completely precious can we get?
  
  Especially with no acknowledgement whatsoever as to the extreme privilege of this lifestyle and the fact that Mayes never, really, hurt for money, since like, forever?
  
  If she translates one more Latin cognate phrase into English for the two 8-year-olds for whom the level of literary challenge this book has been gauged, I will SCREAM.
• 
  Joy

  I debated whether to give this book 2 stars or 3 but decided it is worth 3 since Frances is a very good writer. Also, I enjoyed the recipes and may try a few.
• 
  Beckie

  I found this book to be a little hard to follow at times but overall a very beautiful read. The book reads like poetry and a diary at the same time. I found both these aspects to be incredibly enjoyable. The diary aspect means it doesn’t exactly flow like a book might but more offers little vignettes of Mayes’ every day life in Tuscany. And each of the chapters or stories reads like an individual poem or series of poems. Mayes is a beautiful writer and if you have the patience to read her writing you will not be disappointed! This is not a spoon fed sort of novel that spells every little detail out for you. It won’t remind you who certain characters are each time they come up. You’ll have to pay attention, maybe even google a word or two but it will be worth it for this glimpse into the author’s world. I felt like I was actually sitting with her in her garden experiencing her life as she did. Or having a conversation with a new friend who talks to you like they’ve known you for years and I had to pay attention and keep up! So wonderful! Thank you for this book!
• 
  Mary K

  Absolutely gorgeous in every way: the joy, the writing, the food, Italy - love love love Frances Mayes’ books!!
• 
  Fran

  This was interesting and I would have enjoyed it more 1) if I had read it and 2) if I were planning to visit/live in Italy. Mayes discusses cultural norms, food, art and various other aspects she learned after moving from Georgia, USA to Italty. Having said that, I didn't care for her as a narrator.
• 
  A B

  If I wanted a writer to describe a ridiculously boring process - such as watching grass grow or paint dry - and somehow make it sound beautiful and special, I would hire Frances Mayes.
  
  I mean that as a compliment. Ms. Mayes seems like a lovely lady, and she has a rare gift of showcasing the English language at its finest. When used properly, English is a truly beautiful language.
  
  The problem is that this book is really about nothing. It is a disorganized mess. I felt as if I was reading excerpts from her diary. There is no organization or indication of the passage of time. All I can gather is that some of the book's musings took place in summer 2006 when Italy won the World Cup. She seems flabbergasted by how amazing Italy is and how us poor ole regular people just cannot fathom what we are missing. The book has a uncomfortable undertone that is not quite arrogant and is just this side of pretentious. Condescending, perhaps. I feel like she's talking down to me.
  
  She writes about gardening, eating, gardening, eating, and then a bit about eating from the garden. From her descriptions, all Tuscans ever do is eat and talk, and she appears completely oblivious to the fact that people in America like to garden and eat. Generalizations about Tuscan life are made and for someone who has lived in Italy for so long, Ms. Mayes seems remarkably naive at times. I would say this lack of awareness comes from the fact that she is not working in Italy and appears very financially comfortable. With that kind of crutch, it's easy to spend your days gardening and cooking. Aside from a brief complaint about the Euro/US dollar exchange rate and politics of a small town, there is little to indicate that anything goes wrong in Italy. Ever. There is no mention of high unemployment, crime, and corruption.
  
  Another issue is that she describes her many Italian friends by first names: Placido, Luca, Silvia, Chiara, Robert Redford (no, really). I have no idea how they became friends or how to distinguish these people. In fact, she provides so little context that it was 1/3 of the way through the book that I realized the "Luca" she refers to is Luca Signorelli, a long-dead renowned painter from Cortona.
  
  I enjoyed reading about the restoration of Bramasole in Under the Tuscan Sun. Sadly, there is no mention of restoration of a stone "cottage" she buys in the Tuscan mountains. They even build a swimming pool. Oddly enough, the book rambles frequently about her childhood in Georgia, a shameless plug for her Southern memoir that she was working on simultaneously.
  
  For a book about seasons in Italy, there are zero seasons. Easter is mentioned once, and Christmas not at all. These are both important and interesting events in the winter and spring seasons.
  
  Why 2 stars? The writing is just gorgeous. A boring book becomes worthwhile due to how intrigued I was. Sure, she was writing about nothing, but it was somehow interesting. I don't think I will read any more of her Italian memoirs because I think it's just encouraging milking the proverbial cash cow.
  
  **I received a copy from a Goodreads giveaway. This in no way influenced my rating or my review. As always, I thank the author and publisher for the complimentary copy.**
• 
  Suzanne Barrett

  It's been twenty years since Frances Mayes bought Bramasole near the Tuscan village of Cortona and fascinated readers and movigoers with her adventures in Under the Tuscan Sun. Now residing part of the year in North carolina and part of the year in her beloved Tuscany, Ms. Mayes and her poet husband take readers on a wandering adventure of life, love and food.
  
  Every day in Tuscany is a lush tale of reacquainting oneself with good friends, happy jaunts and delicious cuisine, simply prepared in the Tuscan style. The book is peppered with such recipes as potato ravioli with bacon, zucchini and pecorino, chicken under a brick, Placido's Steak and more. But it is also an ode to the region she loves and an adventure with revamping yet another old cottage and in the bargain, living a simple life.
  
  Mayes cooks, enjoyes gustatory pleasures gleaned from her Italian friends, travels the countryside, delights in showing her grandson many fascinating sights and hunts out locations for viewings of the art of Luca Signorelli. Her writing style is lyrical and enchanting, however, I felt the book tried to be too many things: travel book, memoir, Italian phrase book, cookbook. The result made it rather choppy, but if you loved Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, you will enjoy this journey into the life and objects of Ms. Mayes decades long attraction.
  Comment
• 
  Cheryl

  The movie
  Under the Tuscan Sun was such a hit, I didn't bother reading the book after seeing the movie. This book seems to be a continuation. At the time she is writing the book, Mayes is a local celebrity--you see it reflected in the way the townspeople treat her, and the tourist visits she gets to her house: Bramasole.
  
  "I came to Italy for the art, the cuisine, landscapes, history, architecture, wine, and the ineffable beauty," she says, and you can tell that this is an authentic statement because the entire book centers around it.
  
  What I liked about the book were the descriptions of food, wine, art, landscape--Mayes knows just what it takes to show scenery. She sells the beauty of Tuscany and it makes you want to visit. I could actually see the piazza that she so adoringly described, smell the food, taste the wine, feel the rhythm of the crowd. It was also fascinating to read the Italian phrases scattered throughout the narrative and dialogue.
  
  I didn't care for the recipes though. Or the anecdotes I encountered halfway through that sometimes didn't follow a pattern or underlying theme within the bigger theme, causing the structure to at times fade away into a collection of essays or random thoughts.
• 
  Juliana Haught

  I am kind of sad that my honest rating of the book is only "okay" after having loved the author's other Tuscany books so much, especially the first one. Frances Mayes is a fabulous writer, very poetic and lovely prose, but I found myself feeling a little lost in this book. Mayes' descriptions are beautifully visual, but could sometimes use a little more clarity - I felt like I should maybe re-read the first two books so I could keep track of the houses and places that Mayes talks about. Also, there was a long section on the locations and works of a certain Italian artist that read like a travelogue. I struggled to maintain interest in this part, even though I've studied art history and love the Italian masters myself. Since I don't ever plan to go to Italy to follow the tour of this artist's work, I finally skipped past the end of that section - it was that, or drop the book altogether. Other parts of this book read like poetry. While I probably won't read this again, I'd still be open to reading other works by this author, because I love how she sees the world and how she describes it. She seems like an ideal person to join for a day or two in a car, exploring some quaint place.
• 
  Marcia

  I am a big fan of Ms. Mayes two previous books about her life in Tuscany. Compared to them, this one fell short. The sections chronicling her quest to follow the Italian artists, though meant to share her passion for the artists and their art, lacked passion, feeling more like distracting filler than, quoting the book "a passionate and inviting account of the richness and complexity of Italian art." Far more interesting were the stories about her neighbors, her family her home. Unfortunately, there was far too little of that.
• 
  K.M. Weiland

  I will agree that Mayes is probably beginning to reach the end of originality in her series on Tuscany. And I will also agree that this installment is a little less focused and poetic than previous books. But I still love it. Mayes is magic with words, and Tuscany is still a delightful and intoxicating place to get to visit by proxy.
• 
  Dorina

  I am a fan of Frances Mayes. When I read her books, I feel like I am right there beside her. This was no exception. I felt like I was traveling through Tuscany and it’s villages. The descriptions were vivid, the food sounded amazing and I am happy she included a few recipes to try. I am looking forward to visiting Tuscany but in the meantime, I will travel with Frances.
• 
  Amy the book-bat

  This book made me hungry with all of the amazing food descriptions. Some of the stories were really good and held my attention, and some not so much. Overall, I thought the book was very well-written and I loved how the descriptions brought things to life.
• 
  Michele H

  I enjoy Frances Mayes' writings about Italy and I love the recipes she includes. Another book about her enviable Italian life. Good summer read.
• 
  Jo

  A cookbook? A diary? A non-cohesive book of random thoughts about Tuscany. Marketed as a sequel to Under the Tuscan Sun. Extremely tedious
• 
  Paris_love

  Книгата се оказа доста по - различна от очакваното , но пък красивите описания и колоритни разкази ми допаднаха . Ето и цялостното ми мнение -
  https://booumouse.blogspot.com/2020/0...
• 
  An Cn

  This is my first DNF. I really couldn't make it any further. Under the Tuscan Sun was good - this one on the other hand, very unsatisfying.
• 
  Jenifer

  I thought this memoir was interesting, because I'm interested in a lot of the things that Mayes loves to talk about; food, friends, family, architecture, art and living a simple, well-intentioned life.
  
  I liked her writing and I didn't think she was overly optimistic or complaining. Man, people love to read a memoir and then pick every detail and statement of the author apart! I think maybe they just don't like memoirs.
• 
  Christine Zibas

  Well known for her books about the Tuscan countryside, its people, and the life of an expat in Cortona, Frances Mayes brings us yet more stories in her newest book, Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life. Unlike other authors who dwell on the same subject (even those whose life is similar to Mayes albeit in another European idyll instead of Tuscany), however, Mayes breathes new life into a place readers have come to know through her writings (Under the Tuscan Sun, Bella Tuscany, among others).
  
  Mayes's writing really aligns with the TS Eliot sentiment that "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." Each time Mayes turns our attention to Tuscany and her travels in the Italian countryside, it is as if both she and we had discovered something old and beautiful at an antique fair. Mayes personalizes Italy for her readers, with tales of her neighbors, her cooking, her garden, even her troubles when she protests a local building project and a retaliation by local thugs.
  
  In this volume, there is a focus on a local Cortona painter from the Renaissance, whose works she ferrets out in surrounding churches, palaces, and galleries. There are endless stories of the garden and cooking (along with intriguing recipes, some handed down from long ago Etruscans to modern day Tuscans). There is the incident that results from a very American decision to protest the building of a local structure, and the lessons learned. There are tales of neighbors and family and her husband Ed, which figure prominently and infuse the book with love.
  
  There's very little that's surprising for anyone who knows Mayes's other work, and yet it often seems each page contains a tiny gem, a hidden secret from the Italian countryside or way of living. She's an excellent landscape painter of words, but she's even better at conveying just what it is that makes living in a "foreign" land so enchanting and rewarding, despite the hard work of maintaining an old house or working out the puzzle of just the right cultural approach to a dilemma (when one's own upbringing doesn't match that of the new land).
  
  In short, there's nothing new under this Tuscan sun, but that doesn't mean this book isn't worth grabbing up and devouring. It's a love song to Tuscany, a small glimpse of a layered life that would take a lifetime to understand. Frances Mayes is a brilliant writer, and this book delights from the first page to the last. For anyone who has longed to live in a foreign place, to know it as home, this book is sure to please and guaranteed to let you inhabit a magical place for at least a few hours.
  
• 
  Kimberly

  2.5 stars, rounded to 3 My husband bought me this book as a Christmas gift, most likely because he knows I love the movie Under the Tuscan Sun and because we went to Italy together a few years back and loved it. I haven't read Mayes' previous two books which left me at a disadvantage reading this as there were certainly references that I didn't quite get. On the negative side, the book didn't flow particularly well for me, because the chapters were comprised of shorter passages that didn't always seem cohesive. On the positive side, Mayes was great at capturing the spirit and feel of Italy (I would hope so, haha!). I especially enjoyed her reflections on how Italians feed children versus Americans. Americans seem to think there are 'kids' foods' (i.e. chicken nuggets, fries, etc.) and 'adult foods', but this is an entirely foreign concept to Italians. In Italy, children eat what adults do. Incidentally, that's also how I feed our kids. Anyway, I was also excited by how many recipes were in the book and I'm really looking forward to trying them. I'm not sure that I would read another of Mayes' books in the same vein as this one, but I would definitely buy a cookbook by her if she ever does one. She properly captures the Italian way of cooking with quality ingredients--simple is better.
• 
  Jodi

  This review refers specifically to the audio edition. Frances Mayes is a terrible narrator for all that she is a magically lyrical writer. This is not a straight forward memoir. It is a series of disconnected or unconnected vignettes that describe more life in Tuscany. Some of these vignettes were just lovely. Food descriptions that I could practically taste, weather that I could feel. Other stories went on endlessly and though they were well written, they were long. The art section in particular went on endlessly but while her writing is beautiful I was torn. I kept thinking I was supposed to be jealous. That I was supposed to envy her life, be jealous of it. Although she went into detail about a terrible event that happened at Bramasole, that was really to show us that she's human, The rest of the book was to show that she was not. I suspect as a book this worked much better. The reader could imagine Diane Lane doing the reading, feeling the romance that we saw in Under The Tuscan Sun. But as I started this review, Mayes doesn't have the kind of voice you want to listen to. It doesn't evoke romance. It made me cringe through most of the book because she is describing such beauty.