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.

From the Publisher

The author who unforgettably captured the experience of starting a new life in Tuscany in bestselling travel memoirs expands her horizons to immerse herself—and her readers—in the sights, aromas, and treasures of twelve new special places.

A Year in the World is vintage Frances Mayes—a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlikely locales, of memory woven into the present, and of a joyous sense of quest. An ideal travel companion, Frances Mayes brings to the page the curiosity of an intrepid explorer, remarkable insights into the wonder of the everyday, and a compelling narrative style that entertains as it informs.

With her beloved Tuscany as a home base, Mayes travels to Spain, Portugal, France, the British Isles, and to the Mediterranean world of Turkey, Greece, the South of Italy, and North Africa. In Andalucía, she relishes the intersection of cultures. She cooks in Portugal, gathers ideas in the gardens of England and Scotland, takes a literary pilgrimage to Burgundy, discovers an ideal place to live in Mantova, and explores the essential Moroccan city of Fez. She rents houses among ordinary residents, shops at neighborhood markets, wanders the back streets, and everywhere contemplates the concept of home. While in Greece, she follows the classic Homeric voyage across the Aegean, lives in a bougainvillea-draped stone house in Crete, and then drives deep into the Mani. In Turkey with friends, she sails the ancient coast, hiking to archaeological sites and snorkeling over sunken Byzantine towns. Weaving together personal perceptions and informed commentary on art, architecture, history, landscape,and social and culinary traditions of each area, Mayes brings the immediacy of life in her temporary homes to the reader. An illuminating and passionate book that will be savored by all who loved Under the Tuscan Sun, A Year in the World is travel writing at its peak.

The Washington Post - Anne Glusker

Among Mayes's most thought-provoking passages are the ones in which she faces the least Western cultures of her travels: a visit to the city of Fez in Morocco and another cruise (of a very different sort) in a traditional wooden gulet along Turkey's Lycian coast. Her penchant for historical detail and her keen observer's eye stand her in particularly good stead in these less familiar surroundings. She also does well when she draws back the curtain on her emotional life, notably during the chapter on Scotland, in which she ruminates on friendships over the passage of time.

Publishers Weekly

Even people who don't normally read travel books are aware of the old Italian villa that Mayes and her husband restored, chronicled in Mayes's bestseller Under the Tuscan Sun and three other books about Tuscany. So it's somewhat surprising when Mayes declares her wanderlust, her passion for other beautiful places in the world. She adores Tuscany, but also loves tasting other people's cuisines, learning their gardening habits, reading their poetry, swimming their waters. She's always looking around and wondering, "How do place and character intertwine? Could I feel at home here? What is home to those around me? Who are they in their homes, those mysterious others?" In this luminous volume, she and her husband visit southern Spain, Portugal, Sicily, southern Italy, Morocco, Greece, Crete, Scotland, Turkey and places in between. Usually they rent an apartment or villa, so they can cook, sprawl and feel like "locals." They survive a couple of package trips (a cruise around the Greek islands, a small charter around Turkey) which only highlight the pleasures of independent travel-having the freedom to wander and discover things for themselves, without a schedule. And happily, there's no mention of prices to mar readers' escapist fantasies. (Mar. 14) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Mayes's first travel memoir since Bella Tuscany (which followed the best-selling Under the Tuscan Sun) takes her further afield in her beloved Italy and beyond. The title is somewhat of a misnomer-these journeys were actually conducted over a five-year period-but they are arranged in calendar order, beginning with a January visit to Andalucia and concluding with a year-end trip to Mantova, Italy. In the months between, Mayes takes a sweltering trip to Greece, reunites with friends in Scotland, and journeys to Fez, Naples, Sicily, Burgundy, Portugal, and more. Her motif throughout is the concept of "home"; she stays long enough in each place to experience everyday life there as a dweller, not a tourist. Fans of her previous books may be somewhat disappointed with this peripatetic approach, which doesn't include as much discourse on domestic topics like home restoration, gardening, and cooking (although there is plenty of food and flora discussion throughout). Indeed, this book could have used more judicious editing-at 420 pages, it's a bit too long, and some pieces meander into the pedantic. Still, Mayes writes beautifully and there will certainly be demand. Recommended for all public libraries; academic libraries may also wish to consider. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/05.]-Rita Simmons, Sterling Heights P.L., MI Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A collection of tales about searching the globe for inspiration, only to find fulfillment on the return home. Seemingly inspired by Martin Buber ("All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware"), Mayes (Swan, 2002, etc.) finds comfort in the world as a visitor, not a permanent resident. In previous work, Mayes has described her adopted provenance of Tuscany with insight and allure. Here, her location has changed, but her writing remains in familiar territory. Divided into chapters that each represent a separate adventure, the book is at its best when its author describes the people she encounters along the way, like Rachid, the faithful tour guide in Fez who possesses an unusual enthusiasm for Joseph Conrad, and Guven, the rug dealer in Istanbul who speaks eight languages and sends notes woven in miniature looms. Literate and seductive, Mayes's anecdotes are immersed in the culture of each destination. Whether it's listening to soul-filled fado in Portugal, sailing in a traditional Turkish gulet along the Lycian Coast or participating in a Greek baptism in Mani, her observations get to the essence of place. The travelogue falters a bit when Mayes details her visits to museums and ruins; these guidebook staples can grow tiresome and require a degree of patience. Food is a constant topic throughout the book: tortilla de verdura in Madrid, steaming churros in Sevilla, tajines in Morocco and Sally Lunn bread in the Cotswolds. Shelter causes concern because Mayes and her companion, Ed, suffer from a common affliction: They have high expectations. They crave intimacy with their environment; large, impersonal chain hotels are out of the question. Getting the nod is anold stone charmer in the south of France and a well-outfitted row house in Lisbon. A noisy rental in the English countryside, meanwhile, proves unacceptable. This is Mayes in top form.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide
• Read an Excerpt
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

1. Mayes opens her book with this quote from W.S. Merwin: “…we are words on a journey not the inscriptions of settled people.” Why do you think she has chosen this quote? What does it mean? When you read it how does it make you feel?

2. Throughout the book, Mayes talks about her lust for travel, using the German word Wanderjahr (their year of wandering in their youth). Do you think everyone should indulge in a year of youthful travel? Would it be better to experience this type of travel while young and impressionable, or at an older age, with more experience and wisdom?

3. Even though this is a book about travel, the concept of home is a consistent theme. Mayes writes, “The need to travel is a mysterious force. A desire to go runs through me equally with an intense desire to stay at home. An equal and opposite thermodynamic principal.” What does she mean by this? Deep down, do you consider Mayes to be a traveler or a homebody? Do both of these driving forces coexist within you? If so, how do you balance them?

4. Mayes describes Andalucía as an “ancient quest” for her because some of the music and poetry she enjoyed in her youth conjured up strong images of this place in her mind. So Andalucía is the first place she visits on her journey. Do you have a “first memory” of a place that you have never visited? Do you have preconceived notions about places, based on experiences or conversations you’ve had? Does a song, book, or poem “take you away” to a particular place?

5. While in Andalucía, Mayes falls prey to a scam. She is surprised but not outraged. Would she be so tolerantif this happened on her home turf? Have you ever made allowances for behaviors or attitudes while traveling that you would not normally have tolerated if you were at home?

6. Mayes describes herself as “a doubter” and yet she is fascinated by churches and other religious customs. She wears an ivory horn and other religious amulets under her skirt to ward off the “evil eye” and lights candles in Catholic churches for her sick friends. What do you make of this? Is Mayes a religious person deep down? How much do you think growing up in the American South has shaped her religious outlook? How has where you are from influenced your spiritual self?

7. Favoring to live like a local when she travels, Mayes makes obvious her disdain for tourists and how upsetting it is to her when a place is geared so obviously towards tourists. Isn’t Mayes herself a tourist? What makes someone a tourist? What makes someone a local?

8. Mayes talks about being driven to visit places by the books she reads. How do you decide where you’d like to travel?

9. Mayes says she fears retirement “in places where the climate is the lure.” What do you think she means by this? Would climate play an important role in your choice of where to retire? What other factors would play into your decision?

10. Naples has long been typecast as dangerous and corrupt. Mayes scoffs at these stereotypes. Have you ever felt discouraged to visit a place based on its bad reputation? Have you ever ignored a city’s bad reputation and visited there anyway? Did any of the stereotypes hold up? How did your preconceived notions about the place affect your experiences once there? Whose advice do you trust in choosing where to travel?

11. People love to buy souvenirs to help them remember a place they’ve visited. In Naples, Mayes buys a Neapolitan cookbook and her husband searches for a CD of local music. What do these purchases say about the buyers? What souvenirs have you purchased in the past that evoke special memories for you?

12. Mayes spends a lot of time describing food and drink. We hear in great detail about fabulous meals, Ed’s search for the perfect coffee, desserts that are unique to a certain location, and the wonderful marketplaces they encounter. Does experiencing the local cuisine enhance your visit to a particular place? Would you choose a lace to visit based entirely on the local fare?

13. Mayes and her husband choose many of their lodgings in order to more fully experience the local flavor. Some of the places they select turn out to be fairly undesirable–cold, cramped, sometimes even hazardous. When you travel, do you prefer to stay in a local dwelling or a touristy hotel? How much do your accommodations enhance or detract from your enjoyment of a particular place?

14. Why do you think Mayes chooses Georgia for the location of The Yellow Café? What did you think of her reaction when her daughter asked her about this? What do her answers and explanations tell us about Mayes and her ideas on home vs. Rome?

Read an Excerpt

Read a Sample Chapter

A Year in the World

Random House

Chapter One

Blood Oranges
Andalucía

Who cut down the moon's
stem?

(Left us roots
Of water.)
How easy to pluck flowers from
This infinite acacia.

-Federico García Lorca


January, old Janus face looking left at the past year and right toward the new. I'm for the new-no mournful backward glance. Make tracks, I write one night on the steamed kitchen window.

The year began with a break-in at my house while my husband and I were finishing dinner. Ed had just tipped the last of a vino nobile into our glasses. Laughing, we were talking about the turn of the year, with Nina Simone crooning "The Twelfth of Never" to us. We'd cleared the plates, the candles were burning down, and outside the dining room window we saw only our potted lemon trees, swaying snapdragons, and yellow Carolina jasmine, for January in California is a blessed season.

In a flash, everything changed. A man crashed through the living room window, screaming that he wanted to die, then loomed on the middle of the rug, his bundled body in ski jacket, droopy pants, and homeboy hat pulled down around his moony face. Even as I write this, my heart starts to pound.

"Give me a knife," he shouted. "I've never done this before, but I'm doing it now." I thought, not does he have a gun will we die, buthe's goofy. Then terror pumped through every vein in my body. This can't be happening! Somehow, we'd stood up. Run. My chair tipped over. He lunged into the dining room. I threw my glass of wine in his face, and as he wiped his eyes, we ran out the back door. "I want to die," he shouted to us as we fled into a street darkened by conscientious neighbors in the middle of the latest corruption-engineered energy crisis. Our house was blazing like the Titanic; lights flared in every window. Our intruder had been drawn to us like a fluttering moth toward the screen door on a soft southern night.

Ed grabbed a phone on the way out and somehow called 911 as he sprinted across the street. We ran to separate neighbors, hoping to find someone at home on Saturday night. Startled new Chinese neighbors brought me in and handed me the telephone, though they must have thought I was mad, while the intruder followed Ed across the street to our neighbors Arlene and Dan. Interrupted in the middle of a dinner party, they pulled Ed in and slammed the door. Then our intruder broke through their door-just as the police drove up.

That was the beginning. The drugged young man was on the street again in a month. I found his sunglasses in a flower bed. Expensive. I threw them in the trash. The year rolled on and doesn't bear thinking about. Suffice to say the words surgery, hospitals, deaths. As the sublime September weather arrived, we all experienced the mind-altering, world-shaking attack on America. Go, bad year. May the stars realign.

Now, Janus, my friend, I am going to Spain for a winter month in Andalucía. Andalucía, land of the orange and the olive tree. Land of passionate poets and flamenco dancers and late-night dinners with guitar music in jasmine-scented gardens.


Ed flew to Italy a week ago because, as always, we have some complicated building project in progress. En route to Spain, he has detoured to Bramasole, our house in Cortona, to see about the drilling of a well for a nine-hundred-year-old house we have bought in the mountains. We want to accomplish a historic restoration on this stone house built by hermit monks who followed Saint Francis of Assisi. When I last talked to him, the dowser had felt his stick bend in exactly the spot where I did not want a well and had drilled down a hundred meters without finding a drop. We are planning to meet in Madrid.

From San Francisco, I board a flight to Paris and am happy to see my seatmate take out a book instead of a computer. No white aura and tap-tapping for the ten-hour flight. She looks as if she could have been one of my colleagues at the university. Is she going to Europe to research a fresco cycle or to join an archaeological team at a Roman villa excavation? I take out my own book, ready to escape into silence for the duration. She smiles and asks, "What are you reading?"

"A biography of Federico García Lorca-getting ready for Spain. What are you reading?"

"Oh, a book on John three thirteen."

"Three thirteen. I don't know that verse. We used to sing 'John three sixteen, John three sixteen' in rounds at Methodist Sunday school."

The flight attendant comes by with champagne and orange juice. "Just water," my seatmate and I say in unison. We begin to talk about travel and books, chatting easily, though I am, at first, waiting for a chance to retreat. We know nothing of each other and will part when the scramble to exit at Charles de Gaulle begins.

She asks a lot of questions. I tell her I am a former university teacher, now a full-time writer. I tell her about living part of the year in Italy, and that Italy has given me several books, written with joy. She probes. Are my books published? Are they popular? And if so, do I know why? What do I try to accomplish with my writing? How do I feel about people's responses to my books? On and on. I tell her that I'm embarking on the first of many travels and that I hope to write a book about my experiences. Why? What will I be looking for? I am drawn into lengthy explanations. I say I'm interested in the idea and fact of home. I'm going to places where I have dreamed of living and will try to settle down in each, read the literature, look at the gardens, shop for what's in season, try to feel at home. I'm talking more openly than usual with a stranger. Is she a psychiatrist?

"And you've never felt God's hand on yours?" She looks quizzically at me.

"No. I've felt lucky, though."

"Maybe you are bringing happiness to people through the will of God. Maybe." She smiles.

She answers my own questions evasively. She is holding something back, even in the basic exchanges, such as whether she is on vacation, that simple opening into conversation. Our little equation is out of balance. Finally, I ask bluntly, "What do you do?"

"I . . . I guess you could say I'm a speaker."

"On what subjects?"

Silence. She is gazing out the window. She is a very still person. "I'm part of a foundation. We try to help in communities with severe problems."

Vague. She sees my questioning look. She frowns. "We're involved in education, and orphanages, and churches."

"Oh, so it's a religious foundation? What religion are you?" I assume she is a Presbyterian or Methodist, a good volunteer for good works, or is involved in Catholic charities.

"I know this is strange, but I have a strong sense about you. I'll just tell you my journey." She then describes the surprise of her conversion, her subsequent adoption of six children from all over the world, her work in Africa and Russia. Her husband, a prominent lawyer, eventually had his own revelation and joins her in her missions. Dinner is served and we talk on.

"You've probably never met anyone like me, anyone who hears the voice of God."

"I think I haven't. You hear the voice of God?" Oh, mamma mia, I think.

"Yes, he's talking to me right now, all the time."
"What does he sound like?" I wonder if she is speaking metaphorically, living out a grand as if.

She laughs. "He's funny sometimes. Sometimes we dance. He's telling me about you, but I don't want you to think I'm a psychic with a neon sign in the window!"

I start to ask sarcastically if he is a good dancer and what kind of dances he leads her in-rhumba? But I don't. As a doubter with strong spiritual interests, I'm tantalized by her big holy spirit visitations. I imagine it feels like a mewling kitten being lifted in the jaws of an enormous mother cat and taken to safety. I'm ready myself but have never felt the slightest inkling that anything out there in the void is the least bit interested in the hairs on my head or the feathers of small sparrows. "If God is talking about me, I'd like to hear what he says because I've never heard from him before tonight." Where's the flight attendant? I'd like a big glass of wine. This is getting surreal. I'm thirty-five thousand feet above terra firma with someone who dances with God.

"Well, I will tell you that He says you have the gift of divine humility. How did you get that? It's so rare."

"Maybe it's a lack of confidence!"

"No, I've seen it in one priest, someone I consulted when I felt the urge to prophesy."

Whoa! Prophesy? "Oh, you're a prophet?" I toss this off casually, as though it were Oh, you're from Memphis.

She looks out the window. Sighs. "I know how it sounds. It's so simple." I see her struggling to explain. "I just wait to speak. I wait for God. Sometimes it's just sounds."

"Glossolalia?" She nods. "I've seen that. My friends and I used to peer in the windows at the holy roller and snake-handling churches way down in South Georgia." I don't say that those people fell to the floor writhing and drooling. That we ran away, scared out of our socks. This woman in her Dana Buchman suit and good haircut seems as sane as the United pilot of this plane.

"Have you ever heard of a Charismatic Prophet? That's my calling. I knew I was going to sit beside someone on this flight who would change my life. I always wanted to write. Now I hear how you do it and it frees me to try. God put me beside you. Someone, he says, with a holy approach to writing."

Now I'm really fascinated. Someone who not only hears the voice of God but speaks in the tongues of angels and knows what's coming toward us. And I like hearing God's perception that my approach to writing is holy. No one ever has talked to me about the nature of my involvement with words. I've heard plenty about the words themselves but not about the vocation I have. Turbulence starts to shake the overhead compartments. A queasy flyer, I begin to wonder if maybe she is an angel sent to accompany me to the afterlife when the plane spirals down into the Atlantic. But soon the seat belt light flicks off, and the long flight across the waters, black, then leaden, then streaked with sterling light, continues.

As we start our descent into the rainy skies of Paris, she says, "I don't do this. I don't like to debase my gift, but I will tell you something. You are travelling with three angels. One is ministering, one is protecting, and I don't know what the other one is for."

"Oh, no," I say, instantly pessimistic. "Angel of death."

She laughs. "God tells me you are too fatalistic. The third angel is something very good."

Maybe it's the skipping across time zones or the cabin pressure or the lack of sleep, but I willingly close my eyes and try to sense the presence of three angels. Privately, I'm shaken because when I first went to Italy and bought my house, I had a dream that the house held one hundred angels and that I would discover them one by one. Metaphorically, that came true. Starting my travels, I have been given by a stranger three angels to go with me. Without a shred of belief, I can't deny that I am touched.

I give her a list of books I've mentioned and a card with my first name printed on it. I start to write my address but decide that if she wants to reach me, God will direct her.


Madrid. All the connections worked. I find Ed waiting in baggage claim. He looks forlorn-he has arrived with a sinus infection, exacerbated by the changes in pressure while landing. I touch his forehead and find him hot and clammy.

"When I left Bramasole, I was feverish but determined to go. I had to-you'd be waiting. At the ticket counter in Rome, I discovered I'd left my passport at the house. I wanted to climb into a luggage cart and go to sleep. I couldn't face a two-hour drive up to Cortona and two hours back-besides, Giorgio had dropped me at the curb. I asked about the next flight and it was in three hours. I was totally screwed. Then-I don't know why-the woman handed me a paper to sign. And she said, 'You're going on this flight.' "

"You mean. You flew. Out of Italy. Without a passport?" I'm so shocked I can't utter a whole sentence. This seems impossible, but here he is, his steady eyes smiling at the thought that he slipped freely across international boundaries. We're waiting for my bag, but the remaining ones looping around the claim belt are fewer and fewer.

"Scary, isn't it?"

"After September 11 they let a man on a plane with no papers."

"Maybe it was because I was wearing an Italian suit. Another guy, badly dressed, was trying to get on, and they didn't let him."

My bag has definitely stayed behind in San Francisco or Paris. And I can't find the envelope with the claim check tacked on. Where's my damn ministering angel? I have been travelling twenty hours. We queue with a dozen others. Because I changed carriers in Paris, the pouty-mouthed Air France clerk assures me they have no responsibility for my lost bag, especially since I have no proof that I even checked a bag. A big Spanish man with a Zapata mustache takes my side, and two Australian boys start chanting "Air Chance, Air Chance." Finally, Miss Cool decides she'll take my hotel number and send out a tracer. As our taxi spins out of the airport on two wheels, Ed says, "Not for nothing is that etymological connection between travel and travail." The rain looks sooty falling on lead-gray buildings. Suddenly the driver swings around a circle with an enormous fountain; then we're on a tree-lined street along an esplanade lined with one grand building after another. Ah, Madrid. The hotel lights, blurry in the rain, look festive and welcoming. In our room we find a chilled cava, Spanish sparkling wine, sent by Lina, a thoughtful Italian friend.

Ed falls into bed after stoking himself with various antihistamines. I pop open the cava, pour a glass, empty both little bottles of bubble bath into the tub, and immerse myself. Since dinner is late in Spain, we planned to drift out at ten-thirty, but we're exhausted and instead decide to order room service. Ed feels dizzy. At eleven, the miracle of my suitcase occurs-there it is, wet, dirty, but delivered. I want comfort food. My first meal in Spain: spaghetti with Bolognese sauce.

---

Excerpted from A Year in the World by Frances Mayes Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---