Under the Tuscan Sun
Under the Tuscan Sun is Frances Mayes's 1996 memoir of buying and restoring Bramasole, a long-abandoned three-hundred-year-old villa on a hillside above the Tuscan town of Cortona. Newly divorced and on sabbatical from her teaching post in San Francisco, Mayes and her partner Ed travel through Italy with no fixed plan and find the house almost by accident. The book proceeds in seasons. There is the immediate, intimidating work of installing plumbing and a roof, of hiring Polish stonemasons and Italian contractors, of arguing with the comune over permits. Around that practical narrative Mayes braids essays on Tuscan cooking, on the medieval and Etruscan history of the surrounding countryside, on the rhythm of the local market, and on the slow disappearance of grief. The book became the founding text of an entire genre of midlife-renovation memoirs, and Mayes writes with a poet's attention to bread, light, and stone.
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What you might want to know about Under the Tuscan Sun
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
After her divorce, San Francisco State poet Frances Mayes and her partner Ed buy a half-ruined three-hundred-year-old farmhouse called Bramasole on the hillside above Cortona in Tuscany.
Yes. Frances Mayes documents her real purchase and renovation of an abandoned villa called Bramasole in Cortona, Italy.
The 2003 Diane Lane film keeps the setting but invents a divorce plot and most of the characters. The book is meditative and recipe-rich rather than a narrative arc.
Under the Tuscan Sun was written by Frances Mayes, published in 1996 by Broadway.
Under the Tuscan Sun is 284 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Under the Tuscan Sun takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
Under the Tuscan Sun is a standalone novel by Frances Mayes, not part of a series.
Under the Tuscan Sun is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
