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The Máté's arrived in Tuscany in the late 1980s knowing no Italian and with only four weeks to search for the country house of their dreams. On their last night there, after having been chased by wild boars and befriended by a country realtor who also sells pigs and coffins, they finally concluded the deal on the hood of a rusting tractor with the lawyer speaking Italian and them responding in French, English, and Hungarian, in a Tower of Babel version of "Who's on First?" So begins Ferenc Máté's endearing, in-love-with-life memoir of their first five years in Tuscany, by turns buoyant, reflective, and laugh-out-loud hilarious. His engaging, often poetic prose describes the way of life they were looking for and found-where neighbors, community, home, and, most of all, children, form the focal point of daily life. They live in a small thirteenth-century monastery, surrounded by their vineyards and olive groves, in the spectacular hills near Siena, a few miles from where The English Patient was filmed. The Hills of Tuscany--steeped in mesmerizing scenery and wonderful medieval towns, full of unforgettably delightful characters and spectacular food and wine-nourishes body, mind, and soul. If you're not passionately in love with life at the moment, you'll be hopelessly so by the time you turn the last page.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Lonny Rach
reviewed The hills of Tuscany on March 31, 2009
The hills of Tuscany
I was really prepared to hate this - the soft-focus mid-menopause cover contributed to a sense of dread about it. But as I'm writing about tuscany, I've had to plow through all sorts of sentimental drivel about the perfect eden that is the contado of tuscany, inhabited by peasants who are the salt of the earth and live in utter harmony with the hedgehogs.
I kept thinking as I read this book of an amazing cookbook I own called La Rocca, which is a record by a WA italian woman of her life and recipes of her town, a tiny rocky place in the deep south of italy. Everything is much, much harder to grow and shepherd down there - those Tuscans have soil good enough to eat.
So Mate and his gorgeous painter wife RISK EVERYTHING by trying to live in italy - diving in after a 4 week vacation on a whim, without the language and a limited budget (this only possible some time ago). Please. If only most people had such hard choices to make.
Humbug aside - engagingly written without too much treacle. Particularly the grounded imagery of working farm landscapes and the cycle of toil that marks the year, and wonderful relish about food, without being too Batali about it. I did get sick of Candace always saying how hungry she was, and the post-prandial gloating.
Scratch the review. I want to kill this Hungarian and take his pretty farmlet.
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