Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy
by Frances Mayes
Overview
From the Publisher
Frances Mayes, whose enchanting #1 New York Times bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun made the world fall in love with Tuscany, invites us back for a delightful new season of friendship, festivity, and food there and throughout Italy.
Happiness? The color of it must be spring green, impossible to describe until I see a just-hatched lizard sunning on a stone. That color, the glowing green lizard skin, repeats in every new leaf. The regenerative power of nature explodes in every weed, stalk, branch. Working in the mild sun, I feel the green fuse of my body, too. Surges of energy, kaleidoscopic sunlight through the leaves, the soft breeze that makes me want to say the word "zephyr"—this mindless simplicity can be called happiness.
Having spent her summers in Tuscany for the past several years, Frances Mayes relished the opportunity to experience the pleasures of primavera, an Italian spring. A sabbatical from teaching in San Francisco allowed her to return to Cortona—and her beloved house, Bramasole—just as the first green appeared on the rocky hillsides.
My thoughts
You know how some books are hard to get into at the start? NOT THIS ONE!!! Frances Mayes had me THERE, in the middle of the scenery with the local people from the first pages of the book! 15 minutes of reading and I was ready to pack my bags and buy a villa in Tuscany!
I was probably half way through the book when a co-worker told me about the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. I knew this book was the second of a series, but I had no idea the first book was also a movie! I went to theater the following Thursday night and absolutely loved the show! It's made the book even more enjoyable than it was in the beginning!
If you want action and adventure, you don't want Bella Tuscany. If you want to find yourself in the middle of a quiet, peaceful, laid-back paradise, you've come to the right place. Like that Seinfeld episode, it's a story about nothing! But it's sure easy to become immersed in the beauty of it all. This book is terrific, calming, get-away-from-it-all reading at lunchtime if you've had a hectic day. It helps to have a background in gardening, or at least an interest in gardening. An enjoyment of wine won't hurt, either.
This isn't a book that I've read quickly. There have been times when I've gone days in-between reading, picked the book back up and it's as if I hadn't been gone. To me, and this is just my opinion, it's not riveting enough to read cover to cover in one sitting. But now that I've finished it, I miss it.
Favorite Passage
Venice was "our" city, my former husband's and mine....Every fish in the Adriatic seemed to be lined up glassy-eyed on ice, ready for the women with their baskets, and restaurant owners trailed by minions who balanced crates on their shoulders. Because I am cursed with a bird phobia, I hovered under the arcades of the Piazza San Marco while my husband walked among the thousands of pigeons then came back to describe the piazza from the perspective I will never see. We found the paper store with blank books bound in vellum and marbled paper. We tried the pasta with squid in its own ink. I loved the cycle of Saint Ursula paintings by Carpaccio.
Four years later we returned with our daughter and had the pleasure of being in her happy company on those canals. She wore a straw gondolier hat, ran to pet cats who wouldn't be petted, left her drawstring pocketbook on a vaporetto and cried for the loss of a dozen pieces of broken glass she'd collected on the tirp. Odd what fragments of memory stay. I don't remember how she liked the lagoon, the bridges, the piazza. She loved the hotel tub's brass swan handles and spout. Strange how memory can reach around years and reconnect to the place and time where old loves are still intact. The memory rush subsides.
Many high waters have washed through Venice since then. Now I am back. With Ed. A different life. We'll make our own way here. I look over at Ed and have to laugh. He has the deep-space stare. "Venice," I say and he nods.
He's already tan, and leaning on the rail in his yellow linen shirt, with the pure glory of Venice racing behind him, I think he looks like someone I'd like to run off with, if I already hadn't. The prospect of days with him roving around Venice: bella, bella. As we enter the widest part of the Grand Canal, it seems to tilt. Soon we're bumping into the dock. "Heaven. Unbelievable."
"Yes, if there's no Venice in the real heaven, I don't want to go there."
