Picture 1 of 1
Picture 1 of 1
Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy
US $4.14
Condition:
Shipping:
Located in: Carlstadt, New Jersey, United States
Delivery:
Estimated between Thu, May 30 and Mon, Jun 3 to 43230
Returns:
Payments:
Special financing available. See terms and apply now- for PayPal Credit, opens in a new window or tab
Earn up to 5x points when you use your eBay Mastercard®. Learn moreabout earning points with eBay Mastercard
Shop with confidence
Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing.
eBay item number:305500624704
Item specifics
- Condition
- Release Year
- 1996
- ISBN
- 9780811808422
- Book Title
- Under the Tuscan Sun : at Home in Italy
- Item Length
- 8.4in
- Publisher
- Chronicle Books
- Publication Year
- 1996
- Format
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- Item Height
- 1.1in
- Genre
- Travel, Cooking, Social Science
- Topic
- Europe / Italy, Essays & Travelogues, Regional & Ethnic / Italian, Customs & Traditions
- Item Width
- 5.9in
- Item Weight
- 18 Oz
- Number of Pages
- 288 Pages
About this product
Product Information
Buying a villa in the spectacular Italian countryside is a wonderful fantasy -- even if 17 rooms and a garden in need of immediate loving care are included in the asking price. Frances Mayes -- gourmet cook, widely published travel writer, and poet -- changed her life by doing just that. Sprinkled liberally with delicious recipes for inspired Italian dishes, amusing anecdotes about the risks of being your own contractor, and a savvy traveler's reminiscences, Under the Tuscan Sun is Mayes's enchanting account of her love affair with Tuscany: of scouring the neighborhood for the perfect panettone and the perfect plumber; of mornings spent cultivating her garden, and afternoons spent enjoying its fruits in leisurely lunches on the terrace; of jaunts through the hill towns in search of renowned wines; and the renewal not only of a house, but also of the spirit. An unusual memoir that combines the appeal of M. F.K. Fisher, Peter Mayle, and Martha Stewart, Under the Tuscan Sun is a feast for the senses.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Chronicle Books
ISBN-10
0811808424
ISBN-13
9780811808422
eBay Product ID (ePID)
262702
Product Key Features
Book Title
Under the Tuscan Sun : at Home in Italy
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Topic
Europe / Italy, Essays & Travelogues, Regional & Ethnic / Italian, Customs & Traditions
Publication Year
1996
Genre
Travel, Cooking, Social Science
Number of Pages
288 Pages
Dimensions
Item Length
8.4in
Item Height
1.1in
Item Width
5.9in
Item Weight
18 Oz
Additional Product Features
Lc Classification Number
Dg734.23.M38 1996
Grade from
Eighth Grade
Grade to
College Graduate Student
Reviews
Reviews From: New York Times Book Review Chicago Tribune By Alida Baker There are nods to Gaston Bachelard's 'Poetics of Space,' insights into Renaissance painting and references to James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, but what Ms. Mayes mostly provides are the kind of satisfyingly personal crochets and enthusiasms you might exchange with an old friend over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table....Casual and conversational, her chapters are filled with craftsmen and cooks, with exploratory jaunts into the countryside -- but what they all boil down to is an intense celebration of what she calls 'the voluptuousness of Italian life.' In a characteristic revelation, she tells us that she sometimes takes along a book of poetry when she goes for walks 'because walking suits poetry. I can read a few lines...sometimes just repeat a few words of the poem....The rhythm of my walking matches the poem's cadence.' Her own book seems more like the kind of thing you'd tuck into a picnic basket on an August day, when 'the summer sun hits you like a religious conversion' -- or, better yet, keep handy on the bedside table in the depths of January, when your memory of the 'the spill of free days' needs desperately to be coddled back to life. By Perry Stewart In 1990, Frances Mayes and her husband purchased an abandoned villa on five acres in the sun-splashed Tuscany region of north-central Italy. In a manner more unhurried than that of Peter Mayle, who went to France and chronicled "A Year in Provence," Mayes celebrates in her book a handful of years of absorbing sights, sounds, smells, tastes and impressions in this province whose intellectual hub is Florence, crucible of the Renaissance. Georgia-born Mayes is a poet, gourmet cook and travel writer. Her Tuscan journal is blessed with input from each of those job classifications. If you're indifferent about the preface, where Mayes rhapsodizes about sitting by the fireplace, grilling slabs of bread and oil and pouring a young chianti, perhaps you'll be seduced by Page 22, wherein she salutes marinated zucchini, olives, roast chicken and potatoes washed down with a bottle of cold prosecco . Maybe you'll hold out until page 66, where Mayes folds into her text a recipe for a custardy cake with pine nuts. Mayes recalls how she learned (in Provence, coincidentally) not to measure, but just to cook, using components of the moment and experimenting at will. She does consent to break down some of her Tuscan creations into actual recipes for the benefit of formula-bound Americans. Woven into sensual images of Tuscany is the ongoing restoration of the villa, a bottomless pit into which Frances and Ed cheerfully toss dollars and lire by the sackful. Mayes has a poet's gift of imagery, and she lingers for pages on a single speck of recollection. She also has fits of word economy, as in a compact, one-paragraph tour of the houses where she stayed in previous Italian sojourns. You come to realize that Mayes is toasting an entire way of life, one with its own seductive cadence. By way of example: At the end of a lingering outdoor lunch with friends, comes the advent of "the delicious stupor that sets in after the last pear is halved, the last crust scoops up the last crumbles of gorgonzola, and the last drop empties in the glass." The Tuscan way dictates what Mayes calls "a three-hour fall through the crack of the day." That's right, a siesta. At the same time you appreciate Mayes' craft, you value her humanity. "I like this woman," you find yourself saying. And what's this? She cooks to the music of Vivaldi, Villa-Lobos and Robert Johnson. Yes, Robert Johnson, the hellhound-haunted Delta bluesman. Well, all right. -- -, Reviews From: New York Times Book Review Chicago Tribune By Alida Baker There are nods to Gaston Bachelard's 'Poetics of Space,' insights into Renaissance painting and references to James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, but what Ms. Mayes mostly provides are the kind of satisfyingly personal crochets and enthusiasms you might exchange with an old friend over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. . . . Casual and conversational, her chapters are filled with craftsmen and cooks, with exploratory jaunts into the countryside -- but what they all boil down to is an intense celebration of what she calls 'the voluptuousness of Italian life.' In a characteristic revelation, she tells us that she sometimes takes along a book of poetry when she goes for walks 'because walking suits poetry. I can read a few lines. . . sometimes just repeat a few words of the poem. . . . The rhythm of my walking matches the poem's cadence.' Her own book seems more like the kind of thing you'd tuck into a picnic basket on an August day, when 'the summer sun hits you like a religious conversion' -- or, better yet, keep handy on the bedside table in the depths of January, when your memory of the 'the spill of free days' needs desperately to be coddled back to life. By Perry Stewart In 1990, Frances Mayes and her husband purchased an abandoned villa on five acres in the sun-splashed Tuscany region of north-central Italy. In a manner more unhurried than that of Peter Mayle, who went to France and chronicled "A Year in Provence," Mayes celebrates in her book a handful of years of absorbing sights, sounds, smells, tastes and impressions in this province whose intellectual hub is Florence, crucible of the Renaissance. Georgia-born Mayes is a poet, gourmet cook and travel writer. Her Tuscan journal is blessed with input from each of those job classifications. If you're indifferent about the preface, where Mayes rhapsodizes about sitting by the fireplace, grilling slabs of bread and oil and pouring a young chianti, perhaps you'll be seduced by Page 22, wherein she salutes marinated zucchini, olives, roast chicken and potatoes washed down with a bottle of cold prosecco . Maybe you'll hold out until page 66, where Mayes folds into her text a recipe for a custardy cake with pine nuts. Mayes recalls how she learned (in Provence, coincidentally) not to measure, but just to cook, using components of the moment and experimenting at will. She does consent to break down some of her Tuscan creations into actual recipes for the benefit of formula-bound Americans. Woven into sensual images of Tuscany is the ongoing restoration of the villa, a bottomless pit into which Frances and Ed cheerfully toss dollars and lire by the sackful. Mayes has a poet's gift of imagery, and she lingers for pages on a single speck of recollection. She also has fits of word economy, as in a compact, one-paragraph tour of the houses where she stayed in previous Italian sojourns. You come to realize that Mayes is toasting an entire way of life, one with its own seductive cadence. By way of example: At the end of a lingering outdoor lunch with friends, comes the advent of "the delicious stupor that sets in after the last pear is halved, the last crust scoops up the last crumbles of gorgonzola, and the last drop empties in the glass." The Tuscan way dictates what Mayes calls "a three-hour fall through the crack of the day." That's right, a siesta. At the same time you appreciate Mayes' craft, you value her humanity. "I like this woman," you find yourself saying. And what's this? She cooks to the music of Vivaldi, Villa-Lobos and Robert Johnson. Yes, Robert Johnson, the hellhound-haunted Delta bluesman. Well, all right., A romantic memoir of buying, renovating and settling into a villa near Cortona, Italy. New York Times Book Review -- -, Reviews From: New York Times Book Review Chicago Tribune By Alida Baker There are nods to Gaston Bachelard's 'Poetics of Space,' insights into Renaissance painting and references to James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, but what Ms. Mayes mostly provides are the kind of satisfyingly personal crochets and enthusiasms you might exchange with an old friend over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table....Casual and conversational, her chapters are filled with craftsmen and cooks, with exploratory jaunts into the countryside -- but what they all boil down to is an intense celebration of what she calls 'the voluptuousness of Italian life.' In a characteristic revelation, she tells us that she sometimes takes along a book of poetry when she goes for walks 'because walking suits poetry. I can read a few lines...sometimes just repeat a few words of the poem....The rhythm of my walking matches the poem's cadence.' Her own book seems more like the kind of thing you'd tuck into a picnic basket on an August day, when 'the summer sun hits you like a religious conversion' -- or, better yet, keep handy on the bedside table in the depths of January, when your memory of the 'the spill of free days' needs desperately to be coddled back to life. By Perry Stewart In 1990, Frances Mayes and her husband purchased an abandoned villa on five acres in the sun-splashed Tuscany region of north-central Italy. In a manner more unhurried than that of Peter Mayle, who went to France and chronicled "A Year in Provence," Mayes celebrates in her book a handful of years of absorbing sights, sounds, smells, tastes and impressions in this province whose intellectual hub is Florence, crucible of the Renaissance. Georgia-born Mayes is a poet, gourmet cook and travel writer. Her Tuscan journal is blessed with input from each of those job classifications. If you're indifferent about the preface, where Mayes rhapsodizes about sitting by the fireplace, grilling slabs of bread and oil and pouring a young chianti, perhaps you'll be seduced by Page 22, wherein she salutes marinated zucchini, olives, roast chicken and potatoes washed down with a bottle of cold prosecco . Maybe you'll hold out until page 66, where Mayes folds into her text a recipe for a custardy cake with pine nuts. Mayes recalls how she learned (in Provence, coincidentally) not to measure, but just to cook, using components of the moment and experimenting at will. She does consent to break down some of her Tuscan creations into actual recipes for the benefit of formula-bound Americans. Woven into sensual images of Tuscany is the ongoing restoration of the villa, a bottomless pit into which Frances and Ed cheerfully toss dollars and lire by the sackful. Mayes has a poet's gift of imagery, and she lingers for pages on a single speck of recollection. She also has fits of word economy, as in a compact, one-paragraph tour of the houses where she stayed in previous Italian sojourns. You come to realize that Mayes is toasting an entire way of life, one with its own seductive cadence. By way of example: At the end of a lingering outdoor lunch with friends, comes the advent of "the delicious stupor that sets in after the last pear is halved, the last crust scoops up the last crumbles of gorgonzola, and the last drop empties in the glass." The Tuscan way dictates what Mayes calls "a three-hour fall through the crack of the day." That's right, a siesta. At the same time you appreciate Mayes' craft, you value her humanity. "I like this woman," you find yourself saying. And what's this? She cooks to the music of Vivaldi, Villa-Lobos and Robert Johnson. Yes, Robert Johnson, the hellhound-haunted Delta bluesman. Well, all right., A romantic memoir of buying, renovating and settling into a villa near Cortona, Italy. New York Times Book Review
Copyright Date
1996
Lccn
96-015137
Dewey Decimal
945/.5
Intended Audience
Trade
Dewey Edition
20
Item description from the seller
Seller assumes all responsibility for this listing.
eBay item number:305500624704
Shipping and handling
Item location:
Carlstadt, New Jersey, United States
Ships to:
Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan Republic, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde Islands, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Croatia, Republic of the Congo, Romania, Rwanda, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Vietnam, Wallis and Futuna, Western Samoa, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Excludes:
APO/FPO, Barbados, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Guadeloupe, Libya, Martinique, New Caledonia, Reunion, Russian Federation, US Protectorates, Ukraine, Venezuela
| Shipping and handling | To | Service | Delivery*See Delivery notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free shipping | United States | Standard Shipping | Estimated between Thu, May 30 and Mon, Jun 3 to 43230 |
| US $8.99 | United States | Expedited Shipping | Estimated between Thu, May 30 and Mon, Jun 3 to 43230 |
| Handling time |
|---|
| Will usually ship within 2 business days of receiving cleared payment. |
| Taxes |
|---|
| Taxes may be applicable at checkout. Learn moreLearn more about paying tax on eBay purchases. |
Return policy
| After receiving the item, contact seller within | Refund will be given as | Return shipping |
|---|---|---|
| 30 days | Money Back | Buyer pays for return shipping |
Refer to eBay Return policyopens in a new tab or window for more details. You are covered by the eBay Money Back Guaranteeopens in a new tab or window if you receive an item that is not as described in the listing.
Payment details
Payment methods
Seller feedback (112,239)
4***e (107)- Feedback left by buyer.
Past 6 months
Verified purchase
I recently bought a book from this seller on eBay and I'm thoroughly satisfied with the experience. The book arrived exactly as described, in excellent condition. Communication from the seller was clear and timely, making the transaction smooth and reassuring. Shipping was fast, and the book was packaged with care to prevent any damage. Overall, a fantastic purchase experience from a reliable seller. Highly recommended for anyone looking for quality books on eBay.
p***c (244)- Feedback left by buyer.
Past 6 months
Verified purchase
Seller absolutely, stubbornly refused to communicate with me on the item. I bought it anyway because it was a good price. I sent several messages that went unanswered. So sad. Other than that the shipping and condition was good. The packaging poor and I was very surprised it wasn't damaged. No padding just 2 thin plastic bags.
s***e (3)- Feedback left by buyer.
Past month
Verified purchase
Item was exactly as described and shown in pictures, packed nicely and secure, and delivered in a timely manner. The Seller is very polite and easy to communicate with. 10/10 will buy from again.
Product ratings and reviews
Most relevant reviews
- Jun 22, 2021
Moving story!
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-OwnedSold by: worldofbooksinc
- Jan 29, 2023
I loved the movie and wanted to read the book
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-OwnedSold by: your_online_bookstore
- May 22, 2024
This was the movie and allowed everyone to enter the world of being an American, but living in Italy. It got me into reading all of Frances Mayes book
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-OwnedSold by: betterworldbookswest
- Sep 17, 2019
Good Read
Verified purchase: YesCondition: Pre-OwnedSold by: thrift.books
- Aug 18, 2019
Good book
Verified purchase: YesCondition: NewSold by: lifesabeach44