Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy

I read Bella Tuscany, by Frances Mayes (she of Under the Tuscan Sun fame), while on vacation. This is the kind of armchair traveling that I love. Mayes writes of Tuscany in language dripping with both adoration and vibrant description. She writes of food, of gardens, of little side trips she and her husband take. It's an easy, quick read, with some recipes sprinkled in here and there that I will probably try. Worth looking in to.

And now I feel that I have to go to Italy in the spring. Heh.

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.

I don't understand why so many people think Frances Mayes hates having guests. She wasn't complaining about all of her guests; just the clueless and boorish ones who invited themselves, slept until noon, and didn't understand that she and Ed had work to do and couldn't spend every waking minute entertaining them. And for those of you who keep comparing Mayes to Peter Mayle, Mayle also criticized/made fun of guests he didn't like. Remember Tony from A Year in Provence?? Even if that wasn't his real name, Mayle still took the time to physically describe him so that the man would no doubt recognize himself when he read the book.

If you liked Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes, you will want to continue the journey in Bella Tuscany. Mayes again transports us to the sites, sounds and tastes of contemporary Tuscany. Using her lovingly restored house, Bramasole, as a base, she takes the reader along through the seasons as she and her husband travel to other parts of the region and the country. The story is as delicious as the recipes included in the book.

This book had an important characteristic which I believe all good books require: It was so descriptive and colorful, that I was able to lose myself within the pages. I have been to Italy many times, and have family in Lucca. Bella Tuscany, as well as Under a Tuscan Sun describes the differences in personalities and lifestyles between America and Italy. As far as her critism of house guests goes,I think she did a good job of defining the difference between a good guest and a bad guest.The way she talks about what she enjoys eating, and what she likes to buy, and where she likes to travel serves a purpose; and that is to make the reader want to experience the same things- to leave their lives of Starbucks, McDonald's and Wal-Mart and try something different. Nothing can be more shocking than to go to Italy, and be surrounded by relaxed, open-minded people and return to America's phobia of anything different or foreign. I have to admit, I was sometimes jealous of her, but who wouldn't be!!

This a lightweight summer travel read that rhapsodizes about the good life in Tuscany. Mayes appears to want to capitalize on her prior success. The writing is enjoyable, but lacks any depth. There are so many other great books about Tuscany out there.

I'm surprised to hear so many people criticized about this book ! If they didn't like what Frances Mayes wrote in the book they shouldn't have bought his book at all. People must have had some ideas what she was writing about. She was writing about how she was feeling,thinking while she was living there,eating,cooking,restoring the old house and some traveling. I enjoyed this book from the start to the end. I didn't think anything she wrote in this book was boring at all. After reading this book I ordered three more books of hers and I'm enjoying those books even more.
In one of the other books,she mentions about what it was like living in San Francisco and Marine County. I'm sure some readers might complain about that,too,since it has nothing to do with her life in Italy ! Instead of criticizing how the book was written,people should just enjoy what the auther wanted to tell you in the book. If you don't like it,you just skip where you don't want to read,or just skip the whole book and read something else !
The auther is a wonderful poet and every time she describes the wind,rain,smell of the flowers and the shadows of the trees,I feel like I'm with her right there. This is a well written book and I recommend to anyone who loves travel essay or interested in Italian food and some history of Italian villages.

I really can't understand why so many reviewers have complained about this sweet little book. Although I'm French, not Italian, I have traveled all over Italy and I found Bella Tuscany to be a sweet and interesting book that provides a few evenings of lighthearted and entertaining reading. In Bella Tuscany, Mayes travels to regions outside Tuscany, such as Sicily and Venice, as well as to the many castle towns, fishing villages and islands. Many reviewers have complained about the chapter on recipes, but I found them quite interesting and delicious! Although I don't think Mayes captures the essence of Tuscany with quite the wit and verve of Peter Mayle, writing about Provence, Bella Tuscany is still a sweet and lighthearted look at one of the world's most beautiful regions.

I have just finished reading Bella Tuscany during our family holiday in the hills east of Florence. 2 years ago at the same old Tuscan farmhouse, I read and thoroughly enjoyed the first book Under The Tuscan Sun. This follow up, started off reasonably well but by half way, it began to loose its grip on me. Being in Italy I could relate to quite a few of the passages but began to wonder what the purpose of this book was. Jumping back and forth across the Atlantic, from present to past, by the end I realised that one third of the text should have been in the first and the rest was simple padding out. The recipes especially are a waste of pages particularly those from the deep south of the US. One passage that summed it all up for me was the section about tourists in Venice - the author appears to look down on those, like myself without realising that She too is just another tourist in Venice. Bramasole was an interesting conversion project but is still a holiday home.
The current book I am reading, started whilst we were still under the Tuscan sun, is a very different matter - Tim Parks' Italian Neighbours is a joy - a real ex-Pat living and working near Verona - this book captures the real Italy without the distractions contained in Bella Tuscany.
I have still to read the third book In Tuscany which I bought for the photographs (coffee table top book!!) - sorry Frances, if I wanted recipe book I would have bought another one to match those in the cupboard. If Under The Umbrian Sun appears on the book shelves, I don't think I'll bother.

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.

Getting through Bella Tuscany was painful! I found her annoying, insipid and elitist. Her editor failed her miserably this time around.
I loved Mayes' previous prose for more than just delightful musings on home renovation in a foreign country. I couldn't agree with Orlando more when they said they will have to go back and re-read her first book. Hopefully that will get the nasty taste of out my mouth.
...Yuck!

This woman is insufferable. So privileged, she sees to have no awareness of her ugly-American-ness as she moves through Italy, and her own rosy memories. And the oh-so-pretentious bad writing. I found myself alternately embarrassed for her and irritated at her. Eventually I just skimmed for a few recipes, and gave up.

While I loved "Under The Tuscan Sun," Mayes' first tribute to Italy, I was enthralled for the first 3/4 of the book with it's complete focus on the farmhouse restoration, but she changed focus so much toward the end (traveling, food, etc.), that I was disappointed (just a little bit....). But, with "Bella Tuscany," Mayes had much more of a consistent weaving in and out: focusing equally on the farmhouse, travels, people, food, and her "other" life in California, that I really got caught up in HER life. I'll admit there were times when I had to put the book down, for sheer envy of her, but I also got to see her life in another sense this time. Like "normal" people, she had her share of losses and tragedies, and those annoying "friends" who suddenly wanted to visit her to have a free place to stay in Tuscany - hilarious! I laughed, cried and vowed to see Italy next year - especially Venice - her description made my mouth water! I found her candor about admitting she had stereotyped Sicily and her willingness to be "Un PC" refreshing. I can't wait for her next set of adventures in Tuscany to be published!

After writing one beautiful book (Under the Tuscan Sun), Frances Mayes has now produced a shockingly awful and bloated chronicle of self-indulgent middle-brow drivel, redolent of boring childhood adventures, septic tanks, monogrammed linen, and 200 kinds of bushes no one cares about (except Ed). If this book were literally tripe, we could at least eat it. As it is, it sits in our lap as uselessly as a dead, hideously deformed platypus.

As a Italian-American who has lived in both countries this was a painful read. First Mayes has not become a Italian by living in Italy. A person would not belittle their House guests or the Italian people like she has. Then to whine about how she has to "endure" her many travels to Italy. Then to Whine more about having to restore two High priced homes. MY GOD! She should learn from the Italians to be thankful for your blessings and live in the moment. The one thing I did learn is ED is a Saint or I know why there is so much time spent on Ed buying wine. Why would you add so many personal discovery moments to this book? I do not want to know about Ed's back, her Ex, her whines about not having her way in Vinece and other travels in Italy. The book is a slow painful and irritaing read. The personal complaints about having to deal with Ed's mothers death and not having her way in Italy are just not called for. I should of put the money spent on this book into a travel fund to visit Italy. Maybe just drive into San Francisco and have a wonderful Italian in North Beach. Just wish there was a NO star rating.

Sorry, Ms. Mayes, but I think your first swing through Italy was better. "Under the Tuscan Sun" was a fabulous book. "Bella Tuscany" pales by comparison. I do still love the descriptions and the wonderful places, but I feel that we're between a story and a travellogue with this entry. Actually, I'm rather hoping that Mayes' next book *is* a travellogue of all of the wonderful places we should all visit in Tuscany! I appreciate the fact that Ed is more present in this book than in the first -- nice to "meet" him more, at last!

Yes "Under a Tuscan Sun" was better, but "Bella Tuscany" was definitely enjoyable. I found myself lost in the atmosphere of the Italian landscape, longing to travel to Italy. I laughed out loud when Mayes complained about her rude house guests. I savored the details of their trip to Venice. My mouth watered when she described their meals. And as always, I love to hear about a wedding. Give it a chance. Do not fret when Mayes steps (physically or mentally) outside the Italian border. This book is not only about a place, it is about a persons life forever changing and growing. I just loved it when she didn't recognize that certain someone. READ IT AND FIND OUT!

Having been fortunate enough to have visited a great many areas of Italy last year,I found this book as well as Under The Tuscan Sun very emotional reading. For me it was like being there again. Even though I do not have the means at my disposal to live as lavishly as Ms. Mayes does, it is a wonderful,warm and very friendly country to be in. Tuscany in particular for me was by far the warmest and most history filled areas we visited. I am not of Italian heritage but have been around these wonderful people most of my life and the love of my life is of Italian decent. Both sets of his grandparents came from Lucca. I hope that in the near future Ms. Mayes will write more about this wonderful area of Italy. Both these book make me want to return to this wonderful country even more.

There are some delightful moments in the book - how could you live in a villa in Arezzo and not encounter them? - but they are marred by the whining, by the hatchet job on Sicily (believe it or not, other people living in or visiting Sicily don't spend their time looking for a Mafia Don around every corner), as well as by other less direct hints that the author is, in the end, just another visitor with money who lacks the soul of an Italian.

This book is so obnoxious it surely deserves recognition! Aside from the author being self-obsessed, I found her completely without any sense of the real world. Does one really "endure" the flight to and from Italy several times a year to live in their summer house?
I also found the constant mention of the costs involved with renovating two massive houses in some of the world's most expensive real estate markets quite despicable.
Also, it was in poor taste to allow people to stay at your hallowed house and then write horrible things about them in a published book. As a Southerner, I am quite embarrassed for her manners.
I would suspect that if another novel comes from this series (the first was much more palatable), it is only because she wants to add a guesthouse.

I loved Under The Tuscan Sun which focused on Tuscany, its people, places and food. This book is about Sicily, where the author was either cold, rained on, put in crummy rooms or deeply frightened by the mafia, which she seems to believe are everywhere, and Venice, where we learn about her bird phobia, and San Francisco, where she buys another house to renovate and gives the ultimate bird to her former husband by (if you believe it) not recognizing him at her daughter's wedding. It is also about Ed, who I refuse to believe exists. But most of all it's about shopping. Fran buys everything she sees, smells, or heard rumors of, and will doubtless be named the patron saint of shopkeepers in Tuscany and Umbria. This is a boring and self-absorbed effort that her editor should have stopped cold.

Mayes again invites me into her Cortona, Italy villa, Bramsola. It has been too long between visits and it was nice to see how life has settled into a routine of enjoying the gardens, repairing the villa, and exploring more of the Tuscan region.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, so I'm puzzled by the negative reviews of it, which I can only attribute to wealth envy. While I'm far from being bucks-up myself, I feel very fortunate that Frances Mayes is willing to both bare her poetic soul and share her travel experiences, and I for one am more than willing to hang on for the vicarious ride. If you can't go to Italy, this book could take you there anyway. Mayes is a very gifted writer, and she's also lucky enough to be leading a pretty charmed life, which she has taken considerable risks to accomplish. All I can say is, "Buon lavaro, Francesca!" (which I hope translates to "Good job, Frances!").

Mayes again invites me into her Cortona, Italy villa, Bramsola. It has been too long between visits and it was nice to see how life has settled into a routine of enjoying the gardens, repairing the villa, and exploring more of the Tuscan region.

I cannot understand why the first book was a best-seller. It was about an ultra-rich, ultra-materialistic women that has only a very superficial understanding of Italy and the Italian people. I bought this book to read for my book club. It was even worse than the first. No more Frances Mayes for me, ever! One of the most self-absorbed authors the book club has ever read. Hope she finds happiness in her eternal quest for the perfect stuff.

After a chance encounter with Frances's first book chronicling her adventures in Tuscany I could only hope that she would follow it up. This follow up book does not disappoint! I love the way she weaves classic Italian recipes into her story telling of harvesting her gardens. The insight into the local people is both engaging and exciting to read. If the first book didn't make you want to move, this one will have you calling your real estate person.

I love Frances Mayes' books. They describe so accurately one of the most beautiful, quaint, unspoiled areas of the world. I love Italy and have been there five times. Her books really capture the essence of that beautiful, charming country. I love the food descriptions too! The restoration of the house was most interesting. Anyone who loves Italy will like her books!

Now that her vacation get-away in Tuscany has been renovated, the olives planted ... Frances Mayes has run out of things to say. There are only so many pages of people eating and gardening and lounging in their lemonarias that one can stand. The vignettes of Italian life that made "Under the Tuscan Sun" so delightful are all but absent here. Frances Mayes and her husband appear to be spoiled academics with too much money and time on their hands. It is difficult to sympathize with their minor construction problems as if they are life tragedies.

It was interesting to read that some reviewers did not receive Bella Tuscany well, compared to Under the Tuscan Sun. I read the book in a park under the Sydney Harbour Bridge with our wonderful Opera House across the water on a wonderfully warm, sunny and peaceful day. Large yachts and old sailing ships meandered by all afternoon. It was a perfect setting to be in the right frame of mind for a book that is simply tempting you to escape and join in on the adventure. No, we cant all afford to do everything Frances has done, but it sure doesn't hurt dreaming about it. Congratulations Frances.

Her descriptive language is well thought out, but almost no emotion comes through in this humorless travelogue. She shares very little about herself and her feelings and the book is left with being a very well written still life.

The writing is exquisite; however, the author's monotone southern accented voice makes listening torture. I adored her first book, and really tried to give this a go, but had to stop after one cassette of cringing at the slow unrelenting monotone and the frequent southern-American accented Italian words. Torture. Why on earth did the publisher allow the author to do this?

Francis Mayes has done it again. While reading the book I was transported back to Italy. Having lived in Pisa for 2 years, I appreciate everything she endured and experienced. Since reading both books, I feel I know the in's and out's of Bramasole. Next year I would love to visit Cortona again and see the house in its natural setting. A wonderful book to compliment "Under the Tuscan Sun". Wonderful reading, I could'nt put it down.

I could not put this book down. The descriptions of landscape, people, food, and wine were captivating. I felt as if I were there experiencing them with Ms. Mayes. I was as relaxed as she was, walking to town, having a capuccino, picking plants, buying wine. I was there with her and Ed. Maybe I should just show up as one of their guests one summer!!

A wonderful continuation of UtTS. I enjoy Mayes' style and thorough descriptions. Though this story line was not as compelling as UtTS, one must remember that this is not a contrived story, but a memoire.

Frances Mayes is a wonderful writer who can verbally transport you to her personal adventure of living. She describes the beauty of her home in Tuscany with such a personal style, it is as if she is speaking to you. Her observations and comments about daily happenings make you feel "there"; walking the streets, weeding the terraces, buying the ingredients for a special dish, then cooking and enjoying the dish with her and her companions.

Ms. Mayes has, yet again, managed to upstage a land as magnificent as Italy. For yet another time we are treated to the self-absorbed ramblings of this gastronomo-llectual jet-setter. If you want to read a treatise on life as it can (apparently) be lived in a charmed and timeless European setting, try Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence". He is mercifully less full of himself.

Lovely, light book all about Tuscany and life in the author's adopted village and her renovated old stone house and garden with such a view! Wonderful characterizations of people, great foods, travels here and there. Enjoyable and very well written.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed Under the Tuscan Sun, Bella Tuscany was a major disappointment. I don't think this book should be considered a "travel narrative" as it is really a personal, opinion-filled chronicle of one woman's experience in several different parts of the world (Minnesota, California, and Sicily- not just one village in the region of Tuscany). Although I envy Mayes' financial ability to travel at will between California and Italy, I do not envy her selfishness or ignorance. I could not relate to her buying ease, or her annoyance at having to travel home for the death of her significant other's mother.
Being the daughter of a native Sicilian, I was offended by her depiction of the people of the island. While the mafia is still existent there and plays a definitive role in the economic system of the country, it does not rule the lives of every man, woman, and child. If Mayes feels bad for the Sicilians, she shouldn't say so in this book.
After living with a host family in Tuscany, I feel I have only begun to grip the unique warmth of the people there. However, Mayes, a stereotypical American who spends summers there and "endures" some lessons in Italian, seems to feel she has become akin to the natives. A more intelligent writer would use a "show not tell" style to avoid condescending generalizations about the land and people. This book is not a total failure thanks to some good descriptive writing and humor those still struggling to learn the language can relate to.

When I ordered the Bella Tuscany Engagement Calendar, I also ordered one for a friend. When they came I was really amazed to see the beautiful pictures of Italy in the book. Brings back a lot of memories to me. I would recommend this book to all my friends..

Quick and simple...bad. I have lived in Italy for the past 3 years. As an American, I am embarrassed as Ms. Mayes personifies the term "Ugly American". A pleasant writing style is no excuse for bad manners. I think that Ms. Mayes should know how to embrace the customs and ways of another country.