欧宝娱乐

File under "Lifestyle Porn."

I need to preface this by saying that had this book been anything less than a monster success, I wouldn't trash it. But for the life of me, I can't understand why it's so popular. What if she had written about remodeling a house in North Dakota? Would that be interesting? Of course not, so why are the tedious details of doing the same in Italy any different? This book has about as much to do with Italy as it does with North Dakota. The is even worse if that is possible.

I had some friends come to visit me here in Spain and one of them was reading this book. I had read it before and thought very little of it. As I am now in the middle of editing my own travel book about Spain I violently yanked this away from them to reread. I have to say that my first impression of Under the Tuscan Sun was accurate. As I edit my book about life in Spain, I am a little worried about what I feel to be a lack of structure and focus in what I have written. After rereading this book, my work seems like a textbook example of structure. She just seems to comment randomly about her rather privileged life in Italy. This book should serve as how not to write a travel memoir. It's truly ghastly writing at every step without a hint of insight to be found anywhere.

This thing is like The Da Vinci Code of travel memoirs, or whatever the hell you want to call it. She is not as clumsy a writer as Dan Brown; I refer more to the immense popularity of this book. I just don鈥檛 get it. I just don鈥檛 see why it is that we all have to be reading the same book. I suppose that this is how the publishing industry works. They would much rather force one book down our collective throats than to print and market a series of books better suited for a range of tastes. I guess they find this sort of book to be inoffensive enough to cover a wide range of readers who are looking for a book about living in Italy. A more interesting take on this subject would be a lot riskier.

Just an anecdotal observation on my part, but in travel memoirs when writers don鈥檛 speak the local language very well they litter their writing in English with foreign words. The only time you should use a foreign word is when there is no English equivalent, and even then only sparingly. I'd wager that her Italian is pretty lousy.

For me this book is "creative writing" gone bad, and isn't all creative writing just writing gone bad? If you removed all of the adjectives and adverbs, this book would be about ten pages long.

I never felt like reading more of this, no matter where I was in the narrative. As far as the premise to the book, I really couldn鈥檛 care less about some prosperous couple鈥檚 work they are doing on an Italian country estate. I don鈥檛 know why this sort of story is so appealing to American readers (lifestyle porn, as I mentioned).

All of the home improvement narrative had little or nothing to do with Italy. One of the most important things to learn about life in Europe is how their cities work; at least this is one of the most important things that I've learned in my years in Spain. A country house is more for locals who are fed up with life in the city. It will take me many more years to reach this stage of assimilation. Being isolated on your Italian country estate doesn鈥檛 have much to do with Italy. She probably went weeks without ever speaking to an Italian that wasn鈥檛 among her service employees.

Every noun is propped up by a adjective, as if nothing is able to stand on its own. The Italians in the book come across as mere stereotypes. I鈥檓 surprised I didn鈥檛 read about Guiseppe, the old organ grinder with his monkey. For a woman who has spent a lot of time in the country, she has precious few insights about what life is like in that country other than her rather untraditional versions of Italian recipes.

On the back cover of the book they say that the author is a gourmet cook. The first thing that came to my mind was that she may have qualified as a gourmet cook in America back when the book was first published, but among the Italians she probably rates somewhere in the bottom middle of household hash slingers. From her recipes, I didn鈥檛 get the impression that she was creating any miracles in the kitchen. This isn鈥檛 trying to take anything away from her skills, it鈥檚 just that in Mediterranean countries, the bar for culinary prowess has been raised rather high. Like being a distance runner in Kenya, to be considered an above-average cook in this region of the world you have to be truly remarkable. Judging by the heavenly cooking smells wafting into the stairwell of my small building in Valencia, it seems that really good cooks aren鈥檛 exactly a rare commodity.

I suppose people are in love with the idea of moving to a country estate in Tuscany and nothing else really matters. I just couldn鈥檛 give a shit about her petty bourgeois issues with restoring a country home. For me it鈥檚 just a load of really uninteresting gibberish, like someone recounting a dream. The author revealed few truly insightful observations about Italy or Italian life. I doubt that she learned much Italian in all of her time spent there. As she is a university writing professor, she writes in the clunky college professor manner that has shaped and destroyed so much American writing. This just seems like it appeals to the fanny pack wearing crowd of international travel, the folks who read those awful yuppie travel magazines, keep their cash in a money belt, and see travel as nothing more than a shopping opportunity. I'd like to set the author of this book up on a blind date with the guy who wrote the equally-awful A Year in Provence.

I just noticed that this same author has a follow-up book to Under the Tuscan Sun with the sub-heading: Journeys of a Passionate Traveler. I think I need to throw up a little bit. First of all, you can't call something a journey if you use a credit card. Secondly, what the hell is a passionate traveler? Is that like when they do a porno movie on a desert island or you have sex in the bathroom of a train? It鈥檚 like those cooking shows for people 鈥渨ho love to eat.鈥� Are there people who don鈥檛 like to eat? A 鈥減assionate traveler?鈥� I just couldn鈥檛 get past the title of this book to find out what she is talking about. I seriously doubt that she has written a single thing of interest before Under the Tuscan Sun came out even though she taught creative writing. Has anyone who teaches creative writing ever written anything interesting?