A Year in the World – Frances Mayes
Traveling the Globe With the Author of Under the Tuscan Sun
Nov 1, 2009
France Mayes loves the world.
This deep and abiding ardor shines through every word that she writes. With a heart full of appreciation for the diversity of each country and each new people she encounters, she embraces it all.
Accompanied by her devoted and equally inquisitive husband, Edward, the recently retired Mayes chooses to forgo her beloved Tuscany for a number of months in search of places and people that have long filled her mind and her fantasies. Over the course of five years they traveled to, and wrote about fourteen places, including Capri, Naples, Lisbon, Turkey, Fez, and Burgundy.
Great Travel Books Lead to Great Experiences
As she chronicles her journey, Mayes shares with the reader passages from many travel books that she has read throughout the years. As she walks the same ground that some of her favorite authors have walked, she notes the things that have changed, the things that have remained the same, and gives her own take on it all. She recounts the stories and histories of the lands she travels and one gets the sense that, once described, they belong to her.
Mayes truly stores up treasures throughout her journeys: memories, words, friends, recipes, and a few rugs that somehow manage to make their way into her possession. She is particularly fascinated by the wide variety of foods; pastries and pastas, wines and coffees, stews and exotic spices, she samples them all and shares them with the reader.
The Romance of Travel
With a style of writing prose that holds heavy hints of her love of poetry, Mayes’ descriptions of people and places are lyrical: “We are moving over ancient wrecks that lie far below, far below the nets of the fishermen…a golden sand bottom littered with barnacled amphorae…We’re plowing in the watery furrows of old trade routes. Silks, wines, and spices transported to Venice for the pleasures of doges and merchants and courtesans.”
Romantic illustrations are interspersed with humorous observations about her surroundings. Reality seldom meets fantasy without some disillusionment, and Mayes is not immune to the annoyances of heat and flies, smells, and crowds of rude tourists. Still, she takes it all in stride, managing to laugh at persistent street vendors, crazy Italian drivers, and hotel rooms that sometimes just do not live up to their promises.
The Meaning of Home
Despite the act that Mayes is on the road throughout the book, her own life, background and feelings towards "place" and "time" weave the story together as she considers what it means to call a place "home."
Follow the siren song of this amazing book and you will teach yourself a thing or two about the world, and learn about yourself in the process.
Frances Mayes, A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller, 2006, Broadway Books, ISBN 9780767910064. Mayes is the author of Under the Tuscan Sun (2007) and Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy (2000) written about her life in an old house she bought in Cortona, Italy. In addition to her books on Tuscany she has written a novel, Swan, and published six books of her poetry.
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