Frances Mayes is the author of the now-classic Under the Tuscan Sun, which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a Touchstone movie starring Diane Lane. Other international bestsellers include: Bella Tuscany, Everyday in Tuscany, A Year in the World, and three illustrated books: In Tuscany, Bringing Tuscany Home, and The Tuscan Sun Cookbook. She is also the author of two novels, Swan and Women in Sunlight. She has written six books of poetry and The Discovery of Poetry. The most recent books are See You in the Piazza and Always Italy. Her books have been translated into more than fifty languages.
A BookPage Best Book of the Year
Southern Independent Booksellers Association Spring 2014 Okra
Pick
“The strength of Under Magnolia lies in the very
claustrophobia Mayes aches to flee as a child…In certain heightened
moments of this memoir, Mayes breathes the same air as [Carson]
McCullers.” –New York Times Book Review
“As gothic as anything Faulkner could have dreamed up, populated by
characters straight out of a Flannery O’Connor story…a thorny
memoir that strips away the polite Southern masks, sweet magnolias
be damned. Unforgettable.” – Atlanta Journal Constitution
“With perfect-pitch language, Mayes unblinkingly describes her
growing-up years… One can almost taste the mushiness of ‘a pot
of once-green beans falling apart in salt pork’; one can almost
smell the cloying scent of honeysuckle, gardenias and overripe
peaches that infuse the always-too-humid air.”– USAToday.com
“Just the right balance of humor, irony and tragedy. And no tourist
guide or coffee table book will offer a more sensually pleasing
portrait of the culture, food, language, and landscape of the place
she now calls home.” –Roanoke Times
“Under Magnolia is a vibrant example of Mayes’ literary artistry.
Her memoir teems with beautiful, pellucid vignettes, described with
a painter’s eye for detail, [about a young girl maturing to
adulthood amidst domestic tumult].” –Arts Atlanta
“You better believe we devoured every page of this delicious read.”
–SouthernLiving.com
“A memoir of luminous language and sensory memory that explores the
concept of home, the growth of a woman—and the pull of the South on
all those who have experienced the scent of magnolias on a summer’s
night or a tall, frosty glass of sweet tea on the porch.” —Live
Happy magazine
“With powerful, compact language and an uncanny skill with imagery,
American writer Frances Mayes has raised the bar on writing
memoirs.” –Winnipeg Free Press
“Mayes has the gift of transporting the reader to other worlds and
vividly renders this visit to the South of a few decades ago.”—Palm
Beach Daily News
“A wonderful memoir, searingly honest, beautifully descriptive and
totally compelling.” —M/C Reviews
“A landmark event.”—Wellington City Libraries
“The prose is dazzling throughout…readers will not tire of Mayes’
splendid imagery.”– Publishers Weekly
“One of those books you want to devour but realize it’s more
satisfying to savor for as long as possible.”– Kirkus Reviews
(starred)
“A best-selling sensation worldwide, Mayes will galvanize
readers with this...coming-of-age tale set on her home terrain.”
–Booklist
“Under Magnolia is a gorgeous, dreamy remembrance of hot Southern
afternoons, mothers in red lipstick and Shalimar, Elvis turned up
loud to cover up the family troubles that ran deep. An unflinching
love song to her simultaneously rich and troubled childhood, it is
Mayes’ most generous work yet.” –BookPage
“[The] writing is so sensory and poetic you're likely to find
yourself, as I did, re-reading sentences over twice, three times,
to catch the nuances, the meaning, the beauty... From the opening
line, you're hooked.” –Enchanted Prose
“Like the rest of America, I fell in love with Tuscany and Italy
when I read Frances Mayes's wondrous memoir, Under the Tuscan
Sun. She followed her Tuscan books with a beautiful novel
called Swan, which alerted me to her southern heritage. In
her new southern memoir, Under Magnolia, Frances Mayes describes
the birth of her extraordinary sensibility, the deep-pooled clarity
of her writing, her giddy love of nature, and her sharp and
satirical eye for those who brought her up to honorable womanhood
in the tortured South of her girlhood. Her prose style is
seamless to me and she writes in a royal style.” –Pat Conroy, New
York Times bestselling author of The Prince of Tides and The Death
of Santini
“No other writer today breathes life into place like Frances Mayes.
In Under Magnolia, she turns her prolific gift of language and
description to the South and her childhood there. This memoir
recalls bygone days filled with neighborhood characters, sultry
weather, Sears Roebuck catalogues, smothered quail—all the
trappings of a Southern childhood. Under Magnolia is a
love song, a rich and beautiful book.” – Ann Hood, author of The
Knitting Circle and Comfort: A Journey Through Grief
“No one could have invented a more combustible, joy-starved pair of
glam and oblivious parents or a more incandescent child to dive
into the blue ruins, explore the sealed-off passages, blacked-out
dreams and neglected outlets by the beams of her own incredulous
eyes; then break the surface a smart-mouthed, truth-seeing
sensualist, fully in attendance to the vibratory moment. The deft
framing, the exacting word picks, apposite references, high speed
wit, singled out synecdoches of a life; the cadence, phrasing, and
pulse of a muted Georgian accent are all signature to the prose and
poetry, stove-tops and passport stamps of Frances Mayes. In her
memoir Under Magnolia they are second skin. When she comes clean,
you feel, can I say it, cleansed. Freer. Floatable. What an
offering.” – C.D. Wright, author of One with Others
“Under Magnolia is much more than an entrancing memoir: it is a
work of art that defies the distinction between prose and poetry or
novels and autobiographies. It is also much more than a
personal narrative: it is an unflinching meditation on the relation
between self and culture, and, more specifically, on the
gravitational pull of memory. This is a book to be savored, a
feast for both mind and soul.” – Carlos Eire, author of
Waiting for Snow in Havana
“Mayes has written a brash and delightful, cringe-worthy and
uproariously funny memoir. As I read, I wished Mayes had been my
teenage neighbor. Wit–as well as misery–loves company.” –Margaret
Sartor, author of Miss American Pie
“Under Magnolia is one of the most brilliant memoirs ever
written, shedding new light on a certain mysterious South and
offering a memorable portrait of the artist as a young girl.
Frances Mayes, a petite, brainy beauty from what we used to call
politely 'a troubled home' has written an unnervingly honest and
refreshingly open account of how a child can be neglected even
amid privilege and a large family... Reader, artist,
scholar, poet—Frances Mayes gradually became the aesthete and
writer she is today, a passionate lover of the world and the word.”
–Lee Smith, author of Guests on Earth
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