Under the Spell of Frances Mayes

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the name, Frances Mayes, she is the writer who wrote the story that was turned into the feature film, "Under the Tuscan Sun", in this article "Under the Etruscan Wall" we get a clear notion as to why her writing was chosen to grace movie screens everywhere. Immediately, within the first paragraph we see how personable and intimate her writing style is. She references her eighth grade World History class and her past growing up in the American South telling us that because of this, "I am used to the past intruding on the present". She goes on to connect her southern childhood with her new Tuscan adventures, "I wonder if this is why I came here, why I instantly felt so at home in Tuscany when I have not a drop of Mediterranean blood. In the South of my childhood, every house contained a story...". This sentence is an example of the type of honest writing that permeates the entire piece, she is sharing with the reader her exact thoughts as they come to her, she is not writing for an audience but rather a listener.

She emphasizes this personal style on the next page that informing us of her marital situation, having no qualms about telling the reader exactly why she's doing what she's doing and her doubts about it. "For me, buying a house in a foreign country was an audacious act. The end of my long marriage seemed to return me to the adventurer of my youth", the fact that she doesn't try to pretend like this was an easy experience, and that she includes mention of her divorce where she didn't have to already has me rooting for her, I want her to return to her adventurous youth, I want her to find happiness on this new path. She admits that her freedom is "scary", writing again on a truly emotional level, that shows no bias or hidden agenda she is letting the reader into her most personal experiences and thoughts. In case you were thinking her piece was all rosy tinted she very bluntly goes on to tell us that by her fifth summer, "I was no longer amused by the caprices of rented houses, however charming: sagging beds, no hot water, bats roosting in the fireplace, a caretaker who, uninvited, flies through the rooms shrieking and banging shutters whenever it rains", I feel like I have been traveling with her from her detailed and sensory descriptions, picturing the shrill of the shrieking Italian caretaker as they fly in the room unannounced and unapologetically. As she begins her house hunting journey, she continues to be a faithful companion, carrying the reader along with her every step of the way. She admits, "I was running on instinct, and instinct said time for a new kind of home. Time for the unknown. Time to answer the question Dante faced in The Divine Comedy: What now to do in order to grow"? She is on this path, she doesn't know where it is headed or where it will end up, but she is looking to grow and she allows the reader to join her in this intimate experience. When she finds her "dream house" she is not false about it, she maintains her honest dialogue telling the reader about albino scorpions in the bidet but she sweetly says, "but it resembles a house from a dream, one where you discover a room you did not know existed and in it a dry plant bursts into full bloom", it's a perfect description you can just tell that she is on the brink of blooming herself, I read on eager for her to reach the height of full blooming happiness. She goes on to describe the remodeling process and the work that she puts into the house, essentially showing us the transformation from house to home and she ends with a bit of history about the Bramasole, the name of her home. She concludes by saying, "perhaps the name goes back to the ancient purpose of this site, to the lost temple where people like me came when they were yearning for the sun", even in closing she is honest and sweet about what kind of person she is and what she is looking to get out of life, she writes from her head and her heart and it makes her writing endearing in a way that a personal diary almost would.