Helpful Score: 4
The story was not as interesting as Under the Tuscan Sun. Story was slow and like a true sequel.
Helpful Score: 2
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
Helpful Score: 1
Frances Mayes writes a great novel that takes you to Tuscany in Italy with interesting characters, Italian food, and descriptions of wine, farmhouses and plants.
Helpful Score: 1
A sweet book and wants to make you travel to Italy and Tuscany and eat the food and savour the country.
Italy is a beautiful country with a rich history.
This story is largely frivolous. The description of a sunset as "old underwear pink" landed this book firmly in the giveaway pile.
If you want to read a book that glorifies everything Italian (deservedly or not) then you will probably like this book. If glorifying everything because it is Italian may make you gag, skip this book.
This story is largely frivolous. The description of a sunset as "old underwear pink" landed this book firmly in the giveaway pile.
If you want to read a book that glorifies everything Italian (deservedly or not) then you will probably like this book. If glorifying everything because it is Italian may make you gag, skip this book.
Helpful Score: 1
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 ones's life.
Helpful Score: 1
Made me want to visit Italy.
"If I had to choose between her two books, Under the Tuscan Sun would be my favorite, but this one is close in character.
She has a way with descriptions of places and people that truly starts one to hungering for the sounds and tastes of country life.
A number of recipes are sprinkled throughout the book..." amazon
She has a way with descriptions of places and people that truly starts one to hungering for the sounds and tastes of country life.
A number of recipes are sprinkled throughout the book..." amazon
I enjoyed this book, but it is more of a travelogue than a novel.
if you've ever thought of living in Italy, if you want to be a 'visitor' in Italy, if you LOVE the idea of a villa - this is the book for you. Buona Fortuna
This bestselling author wrote "Under the Tuscan Sun" and this book is an account of her continuing love affaid with Italy.
Rose P. (magiccityrose) - , reviewed Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy on + 15 more book reviews
Too much detail about food and flowers...did not hold my interest after a few chapters.
Much better than the movie of the same name - not even the same story! Tells of the work and challenges when an American couple buys a villa in Tuscany that needs lots of work to make it inhabitable. Will make you want to go to Tuscany. Even has a great recipe for asparagus!
If you love travel, this is a great book.
inspiring
I LOVED this book. Having spent some time in Tuscany, Frances Mayes brings back sweet, wonderful memories, and fills in the blanks for me about what I missed or did not understand. It is a wonderful book to read before a trip to Italy. It made me want to go back- ditch life here and just pop over and buy a villa (ah, dreams!). This book is well written, well organized, and awesome!
Fun lite read
A follow-up to Mayes' book, Under the Tuscan Sun.
Never read Under the Tuscan Sun, but I saw the 2003 movie starring Diane Lane.
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 Fellini's 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 unselfconscious. 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. Yet we are finally won over by Mayes. Who could fail to affirm this poet's 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 grape--used for Chianti, Brunello, and Vino Nobile--as deriving from the "blood of love." Lovely, and no small consolation to anyone who's far from Tuscany.
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 Fellini's 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 unselfconscious. 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. Yet we are finally won over by Mayes. Who could fail to affirm this poet's 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 grape--used for Chianti, Brunello, and Vino Nobile--as deriving from the "blood of love." Lovely, and no small consolation to anyone who's far from Tuscany.
