In Maremma: Life and a House in Southern Tuscany

by David Leavitt, Mark Mitchell

Overview

With stunning illustrations and color photographs, this expanded edition of In Maremma recounts the restoration of a dilapidated 1950s farmhouse in southern Tuscany.

Beautifully written, witty, and concise, it recounts the process by which they became initiated into a part of Italian life foreigners rarely see. The pleasures of the olive harvest and picking wild asparagus are juxtaposed with the vagaries of political corruption and self–perpetuating bureaucracy. Landscape and weather provide the stuff of reverie, as do the benefits of boredom and the longing for peanut butter. A celebration and exploration of a little–known part of Italy, In Maremma is a fond if sometimes critical corrective to other more rapturous portrayals of Tuscany.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619020245
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	11/01/2011
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

David Leavitt is a graduate of Yale University and a professor at the University of Florida, where he is the co–director of the creative writing program. He is also the editor of Subtropics magazine, The University of Florida's literary journal.

Mark Mitchell is a writer, editor, and translator, and the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He is the managing editor of Subtropics, the literary journal of the University of Florida in Gainesville, alongside his partner David Leavitt.

Table of Contents

	In Maremma	3
	The House We Did Not Buy	9
	"Con bianco non si sbaglia mai"	15
	Olimpia	19
	Pepe	24
	Merenda	28
	Magini	30
	Il camino	32
	Boredom	38
	Il giardino	40
	Daily Bread	44
	Sheep Jams	57
	"The Documents Must Agree"	59
	Caca d'oie	72
	Cooked Water	80
	The Hershey Connection	83
	High Noon	87
	Turkey Tetrazzini	89
	At the Terme	93
	Piero	98
	Da Pina	100
	Sagra	105
	That One I Don't Go To	108
	Snake Alert	112
	Ilvo and Delia	114
	Frantoio	119
	Shopping at the Hypermarket	125
	The Blue Hour	128
	Immortality	131
	Incompletion	139

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
A delightful compilation of the couple's humorous stories about getting acclimated to Maremma -- the poorest province of Tuscany -- David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell's In Maremma stands apart from all other travelogues about the pleasures of life in Italy. Combine one abandoned old farmhouse, a host of eccentric Italians, and some great decorating tips, and the result is a fast-paced book that leaves the reader chuckling aloud.

Leavitt and Mitchell's book reads like a conversation one would have with a good girlfriend over a fattening brownie and coffee. They divulge the dirt on fellow townies and poke fun at themselves -- mostly over decorating disasters, such as the orange walls they ended up with when they asked for a "a pale earth pigment based colour" called "single cream." Candid and unpretentious, In Maremma leaves the reader wanting even more tales from the duo.

Unlike other authors, who focus mostly on the gastronomic pleasures of Italy, Leavitt and Mitchell confess to getting sick of pesto, prosciutto, ricotta, and pasta. At one point, after three years of dining on fine Italian food, they craved nothing so much as peanut butter. Coco Puffs. BLTs. Even Big Macs! But shhh -- don't tell that to the people back home in America: "On visits home we behaved grandly, lorded our superior knowledge of European cookery over our friends and families, even corrected their errors. ('No, you never put parmesan cheese on clam sauce!')."

From the catchy chapter titles, such as "The House We Did Not Buy" and "Boredom," to the authors' anecdotes of how they morphed into Italians, In Maremma keeps the reader enraptured. (Soozan Baxter)

bn.com

Two US writers conclude their charming account of life in a non- chic Tuscan town with the insight that though they moved there "... to capture a dream less of Italy than of being foreigners in Italy, figures in a Forster novel," they have become Tuscans despite maddening bureaucracy and cravings for peanut butter. One wishes for a map, farmhouse remodeling photos, and observations on how they are viewed as an apparently gay couple. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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