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About Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir
Product Description 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. Review A BookPage Best Book of the YearSouthern 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 sa
