Every Day in Tuscany – Seasons of an Italian Life, by Frances Mayes, Bantam Australia, $34.95.
Part travelogue, part cookbook, part memoir, Every Day in Tuscany is all escapism. It’s 20 years since Frances Mayes first fell in love with everything under the Tuscan sun, and she’s still aglow with adoration.
This third Tuscan memoir follows Mayes on a succession of delicious meals, bocce games, family visits and day trips to see art and scenery. There’s a brief flurry of excitement when she unwraps a gift on her lawn to find a grenade, along with a threatening note. Mayes’ love for everybody and everything Tuscan isn’t returned by the developers of a local pool against which she’s been stridently protesting. If you’d like to be picking fennel, foraging for truffles, sipping “lissom, faintly flowery wine” and dining on trestle tables with simpatico Italian pals, or reading about it in extremely descriptive detail … then this is the book for you.
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