The Hills of Tuscany | 
|  | | | Title: | The Hills of Tuscany | | Author: | Ferenc Mate | | Publisher: | Delta | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 12 October, 1999 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0385334419 / 9780385334419 | | List Price: | $15.00 | | You Save: | $4.80 | | Amazon Price: | $10.20 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
As seductive as A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun, but with the wit and charm of a 1930s romantic comedy, the true-life adventure of a couple who chucked New York for a new life in Tuscany. The Mates arrived in Tuscany in the late 1980s knowing no Italian and with only four weeks to search for the country house of their dreams. On their last night there, after having been chased by wild boars and befriended by a country realtor who also sells pigs and coffins, they finally concluded the deal on the hood of a rusting tractor with the lawyer speaking Italian and them responding in French, English, and Hungarian, in a Tower of Babel version of "Who's on First?" So begins Ferenc Mat's endearing, in-love-with-life memoir of their first five years in Tuscany, by turns buoyant, reflective, and laugh-out-loud hilarious. His engaging, often poetic prose describes the way of life they were looking for and found-where neighbors, community, home, and, most of all, children, form the focal point of daily life. They live in a small thirteenth-century monastery, surrounded by their vineyards and olive groves, in the spectacular hills near Siena, a few miles from where The English Patient was filmed. The Hills of Tuscany-steeped in mesmerizing scenery and wonderful medieval towns, full of unforgettably delightful characters and spectacular food and wine-nourishes body, mind, and soul. If you're not passionately in love with life at the moment, you'll be hopelessly so by the time you turn the last page.
Amazon.com Review
A sensuous valentine to author Ferenc Máté's adopted homeland, The Hills of Tuscany brims with lush descriptions of golden dales, scrumptious meals, rich wines, and friendly natives. After years of nomadic roaming from Central America to Canada, Máté (a writer) and his wife, Candace (a painter), visit Tuscany and impulsively decide that this is where they will settle down. A year later they return and begin the hunt for their dream house. As the likeable Mátés (they're funny and suitably grateful for the chance to live in one of the world's garden spots) troll the countryside with a series of colorful Tuscan middlemen, it's impossible not to become emotionally involved in their quest. And when they finally discover the perfect abode--La Marinaia, a tastefully renovated stone farmhouse set amid scenery that Ferenc describes as "like being in the middle of a painting"--you're thrilled right along with them. Subsequent chapters follow the Mátés' growing friendship with their neighbors, who not only help rototill the garden but also reveal where to find porcini mushrooms and truffles in the nearby woods. All in all, reading The Hills of Tuscany is the next best thing to quitting your job, climbing on a plane, and finding your own Tuscan dream house. --Rebecca Gleason
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Customer Reviews:
• Loving All Things Italian 24 January, 2008
I enjoyed this book. I will be going back to Italy in the fall and will probably visit some small hill towns. Since this book, the Mates are now living in another part of Italy. It was fun to read. Once you read this one then read the next book "A Vineyard in Tuscany: A Wine Lover's Dream".
- Reviewed by customer ID: A20E4D1OZJWCXZ
• Tuscany At Its Best 03 January, 2007
Very enjoyable reading, especially if you have vacationed in this area. I could picture the coutry side and the town of Montepluciana that he wrote about. I loved the area and loved Ferenc Mate's book, "The Hills of Tuscany". Some of us wishes that we could trade places with him, living there sounds devine.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1P175C14XL0KL
• Cheesy, Saccharine, Sickly And Artificial - And Peopled By Cardboard Cut-outs. 03 December, 2008
By the time I got to the end of this I could have cheerfully murdered these two smug ratbags. Everything was so perfect, everybody was so kind, everybody loved each other, nothing bad or nasty ever happened (Oh, I'm sorry, there was the time they were woken by a barking dog) and all that bloody food! I was quite queasy after the tenth description of these gluttons just stuffing themselves day after day with pate, salami, pasta, rabbit, chicken, sausages, wild boar, pork, lamb, cherries, strawberries, potatoes, pheasant, prosciutto, figs, chestnuts, guinea fowl, ten different cheeses, wine, grappa, coffee, tarts, cakes, mushrooms, bread, chicken livers, tuna, tiramisu.
Alright we get the picture! The food here is good for Christ's sake.
Everything was over-described to the point of parody. At one point he couldn't even hose down the brick patio without going into a paroxysm over the earthy smell of the wet bricks permeating the entire house.
There was one hilarious moment when I thought the village was burning down. He launched into a typically purple bout of rhetoric using phrases like,
'I expected to see the dark town with faint lights against the sky, but instead saw the lower part of town ablaze with orange fire. The houses and the towers were black against the light, and some houses glowed, others were swept with flames, and the flames shot through the belfry of the steeple and the bell hung a stark black ....'
A bit later it is revealed that it was only the moon rising and it was a kind of orange colour.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3MN1TQFCZ3CF0
• Thoughts From Judith Petres Balogh 20 September, 2006
What a delightful arm-chair journey The Hills of Tuscany is! Máté's descriptions involve all senses and beyond that they make the reader yearn for something simple, ancient and cozy, -- to be close to earth and to our fellowmen, and to rediscover the joy of unpretentious things. His enjoyment of life is so obvious that his book would be a pleasure regardless where he settled, be it the Arctic Circle or the rainforest of Costa Rica.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A19UJ1J62ZTVBK
• Experiencing Tuscany 05 January, 2007
I thought this book was an easy read and pleasant. It was just kind of a diary of the day to day life the author experienced when he bought a home in Tuscany. It was not an in depth study of life as a foreigner in a foreign country but then again I don't think that was his purpose in writing it.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1UGV8PON1LGG1
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