In Tuscany FROM OUR EDITORS
Experience the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of Tuscany, with bestselling author Frances Mayes as your guide. Featuring delicious recipes, stunning photographs by award-winning travel photographer Bob Krist, and Mayes's vivid, poetic prose, In Tuscany is an extraordinary complement to Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, Mayes's lyrical Tuscan memoirs. Transcending the boundaries of the travelogue, In Tuscany is unique blend of cookbook, travel guide, and art book. All-new text, which includes 25 irresistible recipes, leads readers through the magical villages, kitchens, and festivals that make Tuscany a paradise for the senses.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
From the bestselling author who has captured the voluptuousness of Italian life in sensuous and evocative prose, comes a lavishly illustrated celebration of Tuscany's people, food, landscapes, and art, as well as the abundant pleasures of Italian life as it is lived at home, at festivals, feasts, restaurants, and markets, in the kitchen and on the piazza, and in the vineyards, fields, and olive groves.
Combining all-new essays and more than 150 full-color photographs taken at Mayes's direction by the award-winning travel photographer Bob Krist, In Tuscany is divided into five sections, each celebrating an aspect of Tuscan life:
La Piazza - the locus of the Italian village. With photographs of shop signs, tiny museums and medieval courtyards, people, their pets and their cars, and snippets of conversations overheard, Mayes reveals the life of the piazza in her town of Cortona as well as less-traveled places such as Volterra, Asciano, Monte San Savino, and Poppi.
La Festa - the celebration. In essays and photos of several kinds of feasts and celebrations, such as the Christmas dinner for twenty-seven at a neighbor's house and a donkey race around the church near Montepulciano, Mayes illustrates how the Tuscans celebrate the seasons -- their open ways of friendship, their connection to nature, and most of all, their sense of abundance.
Il Campo - the field. Here Edward Mayes evokes the deep sense of the shift of seasons as he hunts for mushrooms and picks olives before heading off to the olive oil mill and enjoying the first bruschetta with the new oil.
La Cucina - the kitchen. An intimate view of the all-important role of the kitchen in Tuscan culture, including photographs of Mayes's own bright kitchen and gardens, menus from great local cooks, the elements of the Tuscan table, signature dishes with cultural and culinary notes on each, and, of course, delectable recipes.
La Bellezza - the beauty. From the quality of the light falling on sublime landscapes in different seasons and Tuscan faces in moments of laughter, to a silhouette of cypress trees in the early evening and a pile of marmalade cats asleep, In Tuscany features views of beauty that reveal the singular splendor of one of the world's best-loved and most visited regions.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Riding on the success of her previous books, Mayes, who here collaborates with her husband, returns with a curious amalgam of cookbook, coffee-table book, travel guide and memoir. As in Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany, Mayes lovingly admires her adopted Tuscany, where she purchased a villa 10 years ago. Chapters are loosely organized around general concepts: for instance, "Baci (Kisses)" focuses on Italian effusiveness; "La Piazza" centers on the meeting place of Italian village life; and "La Festa (Celebration)" opens with a quote from a song by Jovanotti (an Italian pop band) and goes on to classify the many types of celebrations held in Italy, from Siena's Palio to weekly Sunday lunches. Mayes includes 25 recipes throughout the book, though concentrated in the chapters "La Cucina" and "Il Campo." While there are local recipes such as Onion Soup in the Arezzo Style and Chicken Liver on Little Crusts, some of her choices are puzzling. Mayes freely appropriates non-Tuscan items such as Capri's famed limoncello and Parmesan cheese and even provides a recipe for the mirepoix that is the base of many Italian dishes. A list of resources provides a calendar of festivals in the region as well as addresses and phone numbers for bars, restaurants and specialty stores. Kirst's (Spirit of the Place) endearing photos of Tuscan life fill the pages. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Frances Mayes made a name for herself writing about her love affair with Tuscany, where she bought and refurbished an abandoned villa. She tells the full story in Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy (Broadway. 1997. ISBN 0-7679-0038-3. pap. $15); Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy (Broadway. 2000. ISBN 0-7679-0284-X. pap. $15); and In Tuscany (Broadway. 2000. ISBN 0-7679-0535-0. $35). Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Booknews
In her third book about Tuscany, Mayes presents a lush celebration of the region's people, food, landscapes, and art, describing life at home, festivals, feasts, restaurants, and markets. Color photographs, many full page, are by Bob Krist. There is no index or bibliography. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
AudioFile
The piazza, feasts and celebrations, the fields, and the beauty of the scenery and the Tuscan people are highlighted in this collection of essays about the Italian region by Frances and Edward Mayes. Frances's honeyed drawl conveys a leisurely tone as she describes the details of her adopted home. Edward does a more dramatic reading, adding character voices and segments. The audio could have benefited from clearer divisions between the four subject areas of the book, and perhaps a booklet of some of the photos seen in the print version, but the authors' essays stand alone as evocative reading. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine
Art & Photography
Book Info
