I honestly believe reading Frances Mayes' book Under the Tuscan Sun set our life on a trajectory that has never returned to its original path (and I thanked her for that today).
My SoCal Karen had lunch with Frances, yesterday in La Jolla and was the one that alerted me to this exceptional book launch. There were only two California cities in which Frances Mayes was to appear and I went to the second one, Corte Madera and its awesome independent bookstore- Book Passage.
Written with Frances Mayes’s trademark warmth, heart, and delicious descriptions of place, food, and friendship, Women in Sunlight is the story of four American strangers who bond in Italy and change their lives over the course of an exceptional year.
"Kit Raine, an American writer living in Tuscany, is working on a biography of her close friend, a complex woman who continues to cast a shadow on Kit's own life. Her work is waylaid by the arrival of three women--Julia, Camille, and Susan--all of whom have launched a recent and spontaneous friendship that will uproot them completely and redirect their lives. Susan, the most adventurous of the three, has enticed them to subvert expectations of staid retirement by taking a lease on a big, beautiful house in Tuscany. Though novices in a foreign culture, their renewed sense of adventure imbues each of them with a bright sense of bravery, a gusto for life, and a fierce determination to thrive. But how? With Kit's friendship and guidance, the three friends launch themselves into Italian life, pursuing passions long-forgotten--and with drastic and unforeseeable results."
I sat at a table of interesting and unique women. What fun to have at least two things in common- a love of Frances Mayes and all things Italian.
I was mesmerized by this author. First off, she admitted that she has never done one of these presentations after having two glasses of wine with lunch (the rest of us who had wine didn't notice anything off). Secondly, she's from North Carolina and though she has live elsewhere for decades, her southern accent spills forth like sweet tea. Even her Italian has a unique twang to it that really surprised me. One comment that made me chuckle was when she received the book for the first time, "I was not prepared for it when it came. It's an object. It's big like War and Peace."
Her comments about the book have me very intrigued. The main characters, women over a 'certain' age, have spent their lives with submerged parts of themselves. It is only when free in Italy, that the hidden person is pushed to the sunlight and finds happiness. "It's easy to write about happiness."
Needless-to-say, I am extremely excited to read this new acquisition and to one day return to Book Passage for another of their fabulous author events. I'm hooked!
“Life offers you a thousand chances...
all you have to do is take one.”
― Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun
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2 comments:
"her southern accent spills forth like sweet tea" - I love that image! I think I'll make her my next read.
How fun...but you always have fun
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