Book Review | “Under The Tuscan Sun” Frances Mayes
By Amanda Aguilar
Listen here: Under The Tuscan Sun
I love, love, LOVE scandalous love triangles and extravagant magical fantasy tales. I don’t know about you, but falling into a book provides a secret world unlike my own that I can curl up with a warm blanket and escape to, even if only for a few minutes. If you can agree, “Under the Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes might not meet those standards, but I promise you’ll quickly realizes it’s indeed a good read.
Now I know what you’re thinking: “Isn’t that the movie where some lady buys a house in Italy after getting divorced and falls madly in love with a hot sexy Italian dude, but then HE ends up breaking her heart too, and she ends up just working on the house with some polish guys and ultimately finds herself and new ways to cook amazing food and new kind of happiness?” Why yes, yes it is. After seeing it about 3 dozen times, I figured the book would be just as fabulous, maybe with a few changes as most book to movie adaptations are. But I quickly realized that Hollywood still kept the bones of the book, but definitely changed a lot.
Mayes has such an amazing sense of detail that cannot be portrayed in film and isn’t afraid to put down her thoughts on paper in the exact order as they come into her mind. Her style at times can be a little choppy, but it works, and if read slowly and with care, you’ll see it all as she does. Here’s is a entertaining excerpt that opens the chapter The Wild Orchard:
The watermelon hour – A favorite pause in the afternoon. Watermelon is arguably the best taste in the world, and I must admit that the Tuscan melons rival in flavor those Sugar Babies we picked hot out of the fields in South Georgia when I was a child. I never mastered the art of the thump. Whether the melon is ripe or not, the thump sounds the same to me. Each one I cut, however, seems to be at its pinnacle- toothy crispness, audacious sweetness. When were sharing melon with the workers, I notice that they eat the white of the melon. When they finish, their rind is a limp green strip. Sitting on the stone wall, sun on my face, big slice of watermelon – I’m seven again, totally engrossed in shooting seeds between my fingers and spooning out circles from the dripping quarter moon of fruit.
“Under the Tuscan Sun” isn’t quite a page turner to be read in two days, but it’s rather like how I eat a meal, slowly in hopes to savor every single bite. Taking a little time out of every day to escape to Italy with Mayes can turn out to be a real treat. You’ll learn a little about Mayes, a little Italian language and even a little Italian cuisine. So go ahead, relax, indulge, enjoy and let this become YOUR watermelon hour.
This is Amanda Aguilar on behalf of The Mesquite at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, bringing you this week’s book review of “Under The Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes.
