A Year in the World
Journeys of a Passionate Traveller
by Frances Mayes
Overview
From Barnes & Noble
Readers who wished that Frances Mayes would never leave her sun-bleached Tuscan villa will be less stingy with their travel passes after they read this account of her leisurely excursions through Mediterranean countries. In unpretentious sojourns, she and her husband visited southern Spain; Portugal; Sicily and southern Italy; Morocco; Burgundy; Scotland; Turkey; Greece; Crete; and the Aegean Islands. As always, Mayes's observations about people and other cultures are so perceptive and humane that they never seem arch or editorial.
My thoughts
I would like to be Frances Mayes! I am still envious of her Under the Tuscan Sun story and all the travel adventures she's had since then. Thus it is difficult for me to admit that I have invoked the Nancy Pearl Rule of 50 on this book! I read 50+ pages and then put the book down. It's not that I don't like this book - it's that it takes a long time to read a book written in this style and I'm too busy (or too lazy?) to bother with it right now. I told a friend of mine that if I were marooned on a deserted island, I think I'd love to have this book - to read a sentence and ponder it for hours on end, to imagine the scenery in my mind, to taste the fruits she describes. But the fact of the matter is that I pick up the book on my lunch hour when I'm in go-go-go mode, and I pick up the book when I have 10 free minutes between putting dinner in the oven and folding the next load of laundry. I'm not in that passive, I-have-all-day-to-think-about-this mode right now.
My one legitimate criticism of this book is that it often reads as a list rather than a novel. That's OK for a short time, but the lists seem to stretch on and on.
I stand my opinion that Frances Mayes is a very good writer, and I hope one day I can slow down enough to read this book and enjoy it. But it's not for me now. I've got things to do, books to review...!
Favorite Passage
When you travel, you become invisible, if you want. I do want. I like to be the observer. What makes these people who they are? Could I feel at home here? No one expects you to have the stack of papers back by Tuesday, or to check messages, or to fertilize the geraniums, or to sit full of dread in the waiting room at the protologist’s office. When travelling, you have the delectable possibility of not understanding a word of what is said to you. Language becomes simply a musical background for watching bicycles zoom along a canal, calling for nothing from you. Even better, if you speak the language, you catch nuances and make more contact with people.
Travel releases spontaneity. You become a godlike creature full of choice, free to visit the stately pleasure domes, make love in the morning, sketch a bell tower, read a history of Byzantium, stare for one hour at the face of Leonardo da Vinci’s Madonna dei fusi. You open, as in childhood, and – for a time – receive this world. There’s the visceral aspect, too – the huntress who is free. Free to go, Free to return home bringing memories to lay on the hearth.
