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A Southern Memoir
The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes revisits the turning points that defined her early years in Fitzgerald, Georgia. With her signature style and grace, Mayes explores the power of landscape, the idea of home, and the lasting force of a chaotic and loving family.
From her years as a spirited, secretive child, through her university studies - a period of exquisite freedom that imbued her with a profound appreciation of friendship and a love of travel - to her escape to a new life in California, Mayes exuberantly recreates the intense relationships of her past, recounting the bitter and sweet stories of her complicated family: her beautiful yet fragile mother, Frankye; her unpredictable father, Garbert; Daddy Jack, whose life Garbert saved; grandmother Mother Mayes; and the family maid, Frances's confidant Willie Bell.
Under Magnolia is a searingly honest, humorous, and moving ode to family and place, and a thoughtful meditation on the ways they define us, or cause us to define ourselves. With acute sensory language, Mayes relishes the sweetness of the South, the smells and tastes at her family table, the fragrance of her hometown trees, and writes an unforgettable story of a girl whose perspicacity and dawning self-knowledge lead her out of the South and into the rest of the world, and then to a profound return home.
"Starred Review. One of those books you want to devour but realize it's more satisfying to savor for as long as possible." – Kirkus
"A best-selling sensation worldwide, Mayes will galvanize readers with this vigorously promoted coming-of-age tale set on her home terrain." - Booklist
"[A] gutsy, honest portrait of the artist as a young girl." – Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"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
"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." – C.D. Wright, author of One with Others
"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
This information about Under Magnolia was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: francesmayesbooks.com
Frances Mayes is the author of the classic Under the Tuscan Sun, which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a movie starring Diane Lane. Her other international bestsellers include Bella Tuscany, Every Day in Tuscany, A Year in the World, and three illustrated books: In Tuscany, Bringing Tuscany Home, and The Tuscan Sun Cookbook. Mayes is also the author of two novels, Swan and Women in Sunlight, six books of poetry, and The Discovery of Poetry. Her most recent books are See You in the Piazza and Always Italy. Frances Mayes's writing has been translated into more than fifty languages.
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