Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir

by Frances Mayes

Overview

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region's powerful influence on her life.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307885920
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/31/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	379,594
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Frances Mayes is the author of the now-classic Under the Tuscan Sun, which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a Touchstone movie starring Diane Lane. Other international bestsellers include: Bella Tuscany, Everyday in Tuscany, A Year in the World, and three illustrated books: In Tuscany, Bringing Tuscany Home, and The Tuscan Sun Cookbook. She is also the author of two novels, Swan and Women in Sunlight. She has written six books of poetry and The Discovery of Poetry. The most recent books are See You in the Piazza and Always Italy. Her books have been translated into more than fifty languages.

Read an Excerpt

A SILVER GLOBE IN THE GARDEN
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Under Magnolia"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Frances Mayes.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
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.

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Table of Contents

Preface: A Grape Leaf from Faulkner's Arbor 9

Looking Toward Home 37

By My Lights 49

Under Magnolia 55

A Silver Globe in the Garden 57

Talking Back 79

Coloring 99

Islands in Summer 119

Watering 149

Namesake 154

Riddles and Tricks 183

Whatever was Hidden 193

Frankye: A White Tucked-Chiffon Crystal-Beaded Dress 228

Ten Thousand Rules to Live By 264

The Walking Rain 297

To Florida 324

The Last Wedding 351

Coda: Life Along the Eno 379

Acknowledgments 401

Notes 405

Reading Group Guide

The beloved, bestselling “Bard of Tuscany” (New York Times), Frances Mayes now turns her writer’s eye to Fitzgerald, Georgia, the colorful southern town that defined her early years and shaped her understanding of home and family.
 
In her signature voice, Mayes introduces us to the people and places of her bittersweet past. From her years as a spirited, secretive child through her university studies—a period of exquisite freedom that set in motion her literary life and her passion for travel—Under Magnolia explores the intense relationships of Mayes’s upbringing, with her beautiful yet fragile mother, Frankye; her volatile father, Garbert; her grandfather Daddy Jack, whose life Garbert saved; her grandmother Mother Mayes; and the family maid, Frances’s confidante Willie Bell. By turns searingly honest and humorous, Under Magnolia is an ode to enduring legacies.
 
A lyrical and evocative memoir, Under Magnolia will captivate your reading group. We hope this guide will enrich your discussion.

Guide written by Amy Clements

1. Frances Mayes begins Under Magnolia by recalling a chance weekend in Oxford, Mississippi, where she stood “on the X, not knowing it’s time to leap, when, really, I’d only meant to pause.” When have you experienced a similar crossroad? What did it take to make you leap?

2. As Mayes describes surreptitiously touring William Faulkner's house, what truths emerge about the humanity of great writers? Why has the South produced so much enduring literature?

3. How did Willie Bell help Mayes master the art of endurance? What prevented Mayes’s mother, Frankye, from being more self-sufficient? What did both women teach Mayes about her role in the world?

4. As Mayes describes attending college both at Randolph-Macon and the University of Florida, before the easy availability of the Pill, what can we discover about the impact of the 1960s on young women in America? How does Mayes's college experience compare to yours?

5. Mayes describes her young self as a free spirit with an independent mind, transfixed by literature and disinterested in other subjects in school. How did these attributes feed her highly successful career, first as a professor and then as a bestselling author? What does her story tell us about the keys to success and fulfillment?

6. From reading this background story, what future would you have predicted for this child?

7. What does Under Magnolia tell us about Mayes' early perceptions of home? What spurred her to move to California? What called her home to the South so many years later?

8. Discuss the freedoms and restrictions Mayes experienced throughout her youth. How did her family manage resources, particularly Daddy Jack’s assistance? How did Mayes define "fortunate"?

9. How did the presence and absence of Mayes's father influence her life? How did she heal the scars of his anger, and the trauma of his early death?

10. Discuss the similarities Mayes observes between Tuscany and the South, both her native Georgia and her current homeland of North Carolina. What draws her to these locales? Is the sense of community so strong in these places because of history and landscape, or are there other factors?

11. How has Mayes’s experience of love and relationships evolved since she was a young woman? How did her experiences with Paul and Frank shape her sense of self? How did her parents' marriage affect her expectations for happiness in a relationship?

12. What did you discover about Mayes's literary approach as you read her descriptions of her earliest memories? If you’ve read other works by Frances Mayes, how does Under Magnolia enrich your experience of them, including her fiction and poetry?

13. What are the defining traits of the town where you were raised, especially the food and the customs as well as architecture, history, or even special words or phrases? Would you like to return to your birthplace?

14. Southern writers are especially strong on conveying a sense of place. In Under Magnolia, how is Mayes shaped by the landscape?

Editorial Reviews

A BookPage Best Book of the Year

Southern Independent Booksellers Association Spring 2014 Okra Pick

"The strength of Under Magnolia lies in the very claustrophobia Mayes aches to flee as a child...In certain heightened moments of this memoir, Mayes breathes the same air as [Carson] McCullers." -New York Times Book Review

"As gothic as anything Faulkner could have dreamed up, populated by characters straight out of a Flannery O'Connor story...a thorny memoir that strips away the polite Southern masks, sweet magnolias be damned. Unforgettable." - Atlanta Journal Constitution

"With perfect-pitch language, Mayes unblinkingly describes her growing-up years... One can almost taste the mushiness of 'a pot of once-green beans falling apart in salt pork'; one can almost smell the cloying scent of honeysuckle, gardenias and overripe peaches that infuse the always-too-humid air."- USAToday.com

"Just the right balance of humor, irony and tragedy. And no tourist guide or coffee table book will offer a more sensually pleasing portrait of the culture, food, language, and landscape of the place she now calls home." -Roanoke Times

"Under Magnolia is a vibrant example of Mayes' literary artistry. Her memoir teems with beautiful, pellucid vignettes, described with a painter's eye for detail, [about a young girl maturing to adulthood amidst domestic tumult]." -Arts Atlanta

"You better believe we devoured every page of this delicious read." -SouthernLiving.com

"A memoir of luminous language and sensory memory that explores the concept of home, the growth of a woman--and the pull of the South on all those who have experienced the scent of magnolias on a summer's night or a tall, frosty glass of sweet tea on the porch." --Live Happy magazine

"With powerful, compact language and an uncanny skill with imagery, American writer Frances Mayes has raised the bar on writing memoirs." -Winnipeg Free Press

"Mayes has the gift of transporting the reader to other worlds and vividly renders this visit to the South of a few decades ago."--Palm Beach Daily News

"A wonderful memoir, searingly honest, beautifully descriptive and totally compelling." --M/C Reviews

"A landmark event."--Wellington City Libraries

"The prose is dazzling throughout...readers will not tire of Mayes' splendid imagery."- Publishers Weekly

"One of those books you want to devour but realize it's more satisfying to savor for as long as possible."- Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"A best-selling sensation worldwide, Mayes will galvanize readers with this...coming-of-age tale set on her home terrain." -Booklist

"Under Magnolia is a gorgeous, dreamy remembrance of hot Southern afternoons, mothers in red lipstick and Shalimar, Elvis turned up loud to cover up the family troubles that ran deep. An unflinching love song to her simultaneously rich and troubled childhood, it is Mayes' most generous work yet." -BookPage

"[The] writing is so sensory and poetic you're likely to find yourself, as I did, re-reading sentences over twice, three times, to catch the nuances, the meaning, the beauty... From the opening line, you're hooked." -Enchanted Prose

"Like the rest of America, I fell in love with Tuscany and Italy when I read Frances Mayes's wondrous memoir, Under the Tuscan Sun. She followed her Tuscan books with a beautiful novel called Swan, which alerted me to her southern heritage. 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

"No other writer today breathes life into place like Frances Mayes. In Under Magnolia, she turns her prolific gift of language and description to the South and her childhood there. This memoir recalls bygone days filled with neighborhood characters, sultry weather, Sears Roebuck catalogues, smothered quail--all the trappings of a Southern childhood. 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. The deft framing, the exacting word picks, apposite references, high speed wit, singled out synecdoches of a life; the cadence, phrasing, and pulse of a muted Georgian accent are all signature to the prose and poetry, stove-tops and passport stamps of Frances Mayes. In her memoir Under Magnolia they are second skin. When she comes clean, you feel, can I say it, cleansed. Freer. Floatable. What an offering." - C.D. Wright, author of One with Others

"Under Magnolia is much more than an entrancing memoir: it is a work of art that defies the distinction between prose and poetry or novels and autobiographies. It is also much more than a personal narrative: it is an unflinching meditation on the relation between self and culture, and, more specifically, on the gravitational pull of memory. 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

"Under Magnolia is one of the most brilliant memoirs ever written, shedding new light on a certain mysterious South and offering a memorable portrait of the artist as a young girl. Frances Mayes, a petite, brainy beauty from what we used to call politely 'a troubled home' has written an unnervingly honest and refreshingly open account of how a child can be neglected even amid privilege and a large family... Reader, artist, scholar, poet--Frances Mayes gradually became the aesthete and writer she is today, a passionate lover of the world and the word." -Lee Smith, author of Guests on Earth

From the Publisher

04/14/2014
Set in the author's "one-mile-square" hometown of Fitzgerald in the backwoods of Georgia, Mayes's (Every Day in Tuscany) latest memoir depicts a childhood of rich meals and drunk, impatient parents—her adoring and violent father and her restless alcoholic mother. Mayes endures their "long night sieges," distracting herself with books and seeking comfort from Willie Bell, the family cook. The portrayal of Willie Bell is refreshingly unromantic, written with candor and respect as Mayes refers to her as an ally, adding "it was not a cozy, member-of-the-family thing she and I simply knew we were in it together." When Mayes refers to fleeing the South, her reasoning is more tied to ambition than victimhood. Her accounts of high school and college—first at Randolph-Macon, then at University of Florida—are teeming with tales of friendships and eager suitors. Though the prose is dazzling throughout, Mayes's best stories are the early ones. In an especially moving scene, she sits outside in a car while her father dies in the house. Her uncle urges her to come inside, saying "Sugar, you better go in and say good-bye." Readers will not tire of Mayes' splendid imagery. Agent: Peter Ginsberg, Curtis Brown. (Apr.) The White House: It's Historic Furnishings and First Families Betty C. Monkman Abbeville, $49.95 (320p) ISBN 978-0-7892-1179-8 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, America's home address, is the subject of this comprehensive and celebratory tome covering more than 200 years of presidential and cultural history told through lavish full-color photography. With an informed eye and a scholarly devotion, Monkman, the White House curator for more than three decades, has assembled an impressive catalog of the art, furniture, china, silver, and other decor of all but one of the First Families that have resided there. (George Washington never slept there.) This second edition updates readers with previously unpublished pictures from the most recent Presidents' tenure including the book's Red Room as it looks today and also the current Oval office where you can see Barack Obama's Resolute desk, the same one used by Presidents Kennedy, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and G.W. Bush. A rare stereographic portrait of a somber White House draped in mourning cloth from Washington upholsterers on the occasion of President Lincoln's death in April, 1865 is also in the new edition. Along with comprehensive coverage of the public rooms, there's an occasional peak at the private corners. Photos of the Lincoln bedroom, for example, provides a close-up of the elaborate rosewood headboard and gilded canopy of the Lincoln bed. Though Lincoln never slept there, he used the room as an upstairs office; Mrs. Lincoln bought the bed in 1861 for the presidential guest room. Lovers of history or the decorative arts, in particular, will find this book abundantly satisfying, but anyone with a national pride will appreciate and admire their "Family" heirlooms. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Listeners will be as surprised by this memoir’s content as by its narration. The author of UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN shares memories of her early life in the American South. Although she retains her Georgia accent, a professional narrator may have better portrayed Mayes’s 1950s youth. Still, Mayes engages with stories of her challenging childhood, during which she witnesses the constant arguments of her alcoholic parents. Her life falls to pieces upon the early death of her father. Her wish to escape her troubled mother and small hometown are fulfilled during her college years. But after her Italian adventures and years in California, Mayes finds herself yearning for the land of magnolias and settles in the well-known North Carolina “writers’ town” of Hillsborough. J.J.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

MAY 2015 - AudioFile

Listeners will be as surprised by this memoir’s content as by its narration. The author of UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN shares memories of her early life in the American South. Although she retains her Georgia accent, a professional narrator may have better portrayed Mayes’s 1950s youth. Still, Mayes engages with stories of her challenging childhood, during which she witnesses the constant arguments of her alcoholic parents. Her life falls to pieces upon the early death of her father. Her wish to escape her troubled mother and small hometown are fulfilled during her college years. But after her Italian adventures and years in California, Mayes finds herself yearning for the land of magnolias and settles in the well-known North Carolina “writers’ town” of Hillsborough. J.J.B. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

MAY 2015 - AudioFile

★ 2014-03-05
A captivating memoir by Mayes (Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life, 2010, etc.) recalling life growing up in a small Southern town and how the region permeated her psyche. Though the author fled southern Georgia when she was a young woman seeking an alternative vantage point for experiencing life, the departure from her small hometown did not come without internal turmoil. "When I left the South at age twenty-two, the force that pushed me west was as powerful as the magnet that pulled me," she writes. The author landed in the San Francisco Bay Area, "the optimistic bellwether for the country," and called Italy home for a time. Eventually, Mayes built a life as a wife, mother, author and teacher. During a stop in Mississippi, the South once again forcefully insinuated itself into the author's consciousness: "I'm pressed to know: why the exuberance and melancholy attacked me, why the abrupt heart flips, why the primal rush of memory, why this physical magnetism that feels dangerous…." Mayes and her husband then departed California for North Carolina. Larded with deliciously evocative sensory memories, the narrative dissects the author's early years growing up in a loving yet turbulent family; her parents' alcohol-fueled, long-troubled relationship; the verdant landscape dappled with hints of menace; the notion of home; and the role place plays in developing the psyche. Mayes recounts her childhood when she "didn't know the word ‘racism.' Black/white polarity was the God-given order of things." She finds it "impossible to relive that state of mind." Mayes recalls how the restrictive social atmosphere at the all-female college she attended chafed yet also provided space for developing a strong core self and lifelong female friendships. The author also captures the trauma of her father's premature death followed by her mother's long, sad decline. One of those books you want to devour but realize it's more satisfying to savor for as long as possible.

Kirkus Reviews