Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy

• Paperback - 04 April, 2000 - Broadway
• Usually ships in 24 hours
• By: Frances Mayes
• ISBN: 076790284X

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About this book

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

Other books you may find interesting

• Under the Tuscan Sun
• Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted
• Bringing Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style From the Heart of Italy
• A Year in Provence (Vintage Departures)
• An Italian Affair (Vintage)
• Toujours Provence (Vintage Departures)
• The Most Beautiful Villages of Tuscany
• French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew
• In Tuscany
• A Valley in Italy
• Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France (Vintage Departures)
• The Tuscan Year: Life and Food in an Italian Valley
• The Hills of Tuscany
• The Reluctant Tuscan
• A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure
• A Tuscan Childhood (Vintage Departures)
• Desiring Italy: Women Writers Celebrate the Passions of a Country and Culture
• Venice Observed (Art and Places,)
• That Fine Italian Hand
• Italian Education
• Long Ago In France: The Years In Dijon (Destinations)
• When in Rome
• Italian Neighbors
• Among the Russians

Reviews by readers

A simple life experience in Tuscany

an easy reading account of a special journey through Tuscany's simple life we should all experience.

Bella Tuscany

This effort by Frances Mayes should be considered on its own merits. Like Mayes I have an ongoing love-affair with Tuscany and the people who live there. Mayes continues her whimsical account of life in Tuscany inspiring my flights of fancy and thoughts of my next visit to Tuscany. Her descriptions of Italy whether it be its food, places or people are so sensual and compelling that you put down the book only to long for that next visit to Italy. That is what I expected when I read this book, and Mayes delivered the goods. I was thoroughly satisfied with this book.

This book provides an imaginary escape for the reader...

The book itself is beautifully bound with thick hand cut pages. I found it to be pleasurable simply to hold it as I read it. Frances took me on a gentle journey through various small towns, museums and trattorias throughout Italy, along with shadowing her personal journey during that 6 or so years. The book had everything I want from Ms. Mayes Tuscany stories. If you are looking for an escape to an Italian dreamland, you will like this book.

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