A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home
In Frances Mayes' sparkling new collection of essays, she ponders the meaning of home. It's a subject about which she knows plenty, having made so many homes over her lifetime...It's about the concept of home, that intangible thing to which countless magazines and blogs are dedicated...Mayes examines home from many angles...She devotes gorgeous chapters to the Chatwood garden, filled with tea-scented camellias, jasmine, honeysuckle and magnolia, not to mention an enormous veggie garden she put in at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic...She remembers in striking detail the sculptures, books, kitchens and fireplaces of her friends' homes around the world...It's a whirlwind home tour and homage to friendship in 10 pages...Tempered by a dash of wistful examination as Mayes enters her 80s, A Place in the World is a beautiful, thought-provoking read.
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The bestselling author returns with another lush account of family and place...In her international bestselling book Under the Tuscan Sun, Mayes chronicled the challenges that she and her husband, Ed, encountered while renovating an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole...In her latest exploration of 'the meaning of home,' she focuses primarily on her own homes, including Bramasole, her childhood home in the town of Fitzgerald, Georgia, and Chatwood, the house she purchased and remodeled near Hillsborough, North Carolina, a place 'with an intense sense of community'...Mayes also explores temporary residences that she has occupied, including homes of friends and vacation homes in various locations, including Capri, Provence, and San Miguel de Allende...Despite her feelings of wanderlust, the author asserts that she seeks 'home' wherever she travels, and her feelings are 'visceral'...The writing is characteristically intimate, as if she is sharing her thoughts and feelings with a dear friend, and she employs eloquent and detailed descriptions, creating a wonderful sense of place.
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Novelist Mayes delivers a soulful meditation on 'what home means, how it hooks the past and pushes into the future' in her spellbinding latest...She examines the question through an evocative tour of her homes: there’s Chatwood, with its demanding yet rewarding rose garden in Hillsborough, N.C.; Bramasole, the Tuscan villa in Cortona, Italy, immortalized in her hit 1996 memoir Under the Tuscan Sun; and her childhood Georgia home, a place that conjures memories of her mother’s cooking...As she meanders through her memories, poignant takes on transience and mortality mingle with tributes to the people who bring her homes their vitality: friends, family, and Italian neighbors who drop off gifts of fresh ricotta, wine, eggs, zinnias, and tomatoes...This rich testament to the pleasures of wanderlust and permanence is a gift as well.
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