Moonlight in Tuscany by Kate Fitzroy

Moonlight in Tuscany is a Goldilocks story of a woman who, after three tries, finds the love of her life.  Along the way, she also develops to her emotional, professional and sexual peak.  There are many titillating sex scenes, but the author includes nothing vulgar or explicit.

This is a novel that would appeal most to so-called new adult women, giving them a vicarious experience with three lovers and some idea of what to expect when looking for a mate who will fit well with a modern professional woman's lifestyle.

I'm not a new adult, so my review may be a bit skewed for many potential readers.  As a mature woman, I found that the relationships Lily had during the course of the story brought back too many bittersweet, and sometimes outright painful, memories from my own relationships.  That limited my enjoyment of the book.

Dr. Lily Fairfax, a Cambridge University scholar of medieval Italian history (which brings her to Italy in the course of the book), is the protagonist.  She's a Titian beauty with golden-red hair, and intellectual who hides from her emotions by intellectualizing her experiences.  She finds it a struggle to:

...enter real life, not escape into fiction or history...

The third person limited narration puts us deep into Lily's thoughts.  Sometimes I found that a bit stifling, because I didn't always like Lily's thoughts.  She's quietly confident to outsiders, but inside her head that can seem like arrogance and selfishness.  That style of narration is one that many readers have come to expect these days, especially the target reader of female new adults.

Lily can be a struggle to like at times.  She is almost too perfect, with her only seeming flaws being jealousy and intellectual arrogance.  She is gorgeous, successful, smart, confident, with a loving parent, and she's sexy.

The last trait is one that develops during the course of the book as she becomes more comfortable with her sexual nature.  I suppose if a reader is going to fantasize along with the protagonist, she would like to imagine herself so perfect too, so the protagonist fits well with the book's overall concept of new adult fantasy.

The readers follows Lily as she:

entered a new lightweight world of fun

Lily's lightweight world of fun turns serious when she starts breaking hearts.  That is when a mature female character is brought into the story to dish out this advice:

You're a beautiful woman, bellissima, you are certain to break many hearts before you find the right one.

The woman offers Lily a shoulder to cry on, and someone to confide in, especially when she is suffering the painful feeling of loss that comes with the end of a relationship.  The woman also offers the unrealistic idea that:

Somewhere out there would be a man that would be everything she desired.

That lack of realism that recurs throughout the book gives it a strong fantasy feeling.  Even the author admits it through her characters who reflect that their love story is like a sweet film romance that is too good to be true.  Yes, the final lover is too good to be true, but that is part of the fantasy fun for the reader.

On a serious note, I missed a mention of safe birth control, since the lifestyle the book describes for modern woman is not possible with out it, and because in a book for new adults it is responsible to mention it.

Lily is quite open to flings, and that sort of lifestyle brings with it dangers not just of unintended pregnancy, but of disease and violence from putting oneself in an intimate situation with a stranger.  None of those things are even hinted at in the book, despite Lily feeling:

It's as though I am in the real world at last.

All of that makes me consider the book more of a fantasy story, than a character study or a novel about a woman developing her knowledge of herself.  The Goldilocks three lovers adds to the fantasy feeling, too.

In the back of my mature female mind, however, I had my doubts about Lily's final, perfect partner, but I'll keep them to myself, to leave the younger reader a chance to discover those things on her own.  Not everything a new adult needs to know can be found in a novel! 

 

From the book's description:

Clever Doctor Lily Fairfax is the youngest don at Cambridge... beautiful, too.  But does she understand the meaning of love?  Leaving her sheltered academic life for a long summer in Tuscany, she finds passion... but is this love or lust?  Can it endure?  Can she give up everything she has worked for and achieved for a new and different life?  Intelligent enough to analyse her own psyche, she still struggles to find the reality that her inner soul is searching for... the complete happiness that only true love can give?

Here is a direct link to the book at Amazon.com:

The author has another new adult romance set in Tuscany, which I've reviewed on this site:  Dreams of Tuscany.  And she has several romances set in Provence, France.  Please visit her Amazon.com author's page.

 

At Least You're in Tuscany by Jennifer Criswell

The full title of this books is At Least You're in Tuscany, A Somewhat Disastrous Quest for the Sweet Life.  The book is a memoirs about one year in the life of an Italian-American woman who attempts to emigrate to Tuscany, Italy, at the age of thirty-eight-going-on-eighteen, with her elderly dog.

Like many people who live hyped-up lives, the slow pace of life in much of Italy, and the prioritizing of food, friends and family, captured the author's heart.  A previous trip to Italy had:

...opened my eyes to a different type of existence

So, the author gives up her life as a lawyer and leaps head first into a life of unrealistic dreams of becoming a successful writer in Italy.  She readily admits that:

It certainly wasn't the sensible thing to do.

And very quickly her fanciful dreams of what life in Italy will be like, crumble into dust, and she learns that:

...living a dream is very different from having a dream

To be honest, I found that the litany of bad decisions by the author made me wonder about her sanity.  She didn't wait for all the papers she needed to claim Italian citizenship before leaving the U.S.  She didn't same enough money to last at least a year.  She didn't find a cheap place to live.  She chose a town with little employment opportunities.  She took her aging dog with her, which was surely stressful for the dog, but more importantly, it was very expensive.  She...

Okay, I'll stop there.  I suspect much of the fun people find in reading this account of a search for the good-life in Italy, is a large dose of schadenfreude, taking joy in another person's woes.  If it is, I won't spoil it for you.


So you know what attracted the author to this part of Italy, here is a lovely 2 minute video postcard of Montalcino and Montepulciano and the surrounding area:

 

For the author, one of the biggest draws of Italy seems to be Italian men.  She has a fetish-like attraction to them.  Their dark looks and forward manners make a compelling combination for her.  Add to it handsome dark looks and a sexy Italian accent, and she admits she is like "a moth to a flame".  That is likely the curse of non-Italian women since the days of Katherine Hepburn and her Summertime fling with a married Venetian man, that was watched on cinema screens around the world, in Technicolor.

The tagline reads:  She came to Venice a tourist...and went home a woman! 

At one point the author mentions that the inhabitants of Montepulciano, the town she has chosen for her new home, are not happy with Francis Mayes's book Under the Tuscan Sun, and the film adaptation of the book, some of which was filmed in Montepulciano. 

In the back of my mind, I wondered if the townspeople would be happy with this author's book.  What about the wife of the man she took as a lover, or the people who befriended her, or those who chose to keep their distance from the latest foreigner to fall in love with Italy and to show up without a clue?  How do they feel about having a cameo in this memoirs?  I'm not sure how I would feel about that, to be honest.

What I really missed in the book, however, was any reference to the author writing.  She tells us, and everyone she meets in Montepulciano, that she is a writer, and yet we never hear of her writing.  It was only when reading another review of this book that I learned the book was created from a blog she kept during her first year in Italy.

It would be have nice to know how the book came into being, perhaps in an epilog.  An Epilog would have added greatly to the book, in my humble opinion, for it seems the author has lived in Italy for four years now, and is working steadily, if not lucratively, and she has this book published.  This information would give a nice ending to the book, something that it lacks at present. 

The author's experiences are not unique, but she is very honest about her own failings, and has an amusing, self-deprecating humor.  She is a fluid writer, who confidently tells her tale.  This is the kind of book you would gift to any friend who says they are going to emigrate it Italy, so they can be forewarned that they need to learn the language first, they need to secure an income, they need to realize that people live in big cities for the freedom to live an anonymous love-life, that they are not the first person to have this dream, and that the dream might actually be better dreamt than lived.

I don't write this to be mean, I write it from experience.  Life in Italy is hard. 

• The unemployment rate his very high.   
• Starting a business is prohibitively expensive.   
• The workings of the public services take little account of the public, and are anything but a service.   
• The cost of living is very high.   
• Housing is in short supply.   
• Prejudices against American women are strong.  
•  It is not an immigrant society, so immigrants are not welcomed, and are most often resented and shunned.   
• The position of women in society is a generation behind the U.S.   
• The government pension system is on the brink of bankruptcy.   
• The public healthcare system is archaic and poorly provided for.   
• The treatment of animals can be brutal.

Forewarned is forearmed.  So if you are considering a move to Italy and hope to work and make a living there, read this book to learn what not to do!  ;-)  

From the book's description:

When dream meets reality. . .

Endless fields of flame-like poppies. Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. The sweet, rhythmic chime of church bells.

Months upon months of unemployment? Struggling to communicate with locals? Duvets frozen on the clothesline?

Jennifer Criswell's move from New York City to Tuscany was not supposed to go like this. She had envisioned lazy mornings sipping espresso while penning a best-selling novel and jovial group dinners, just like in the movies and books about expatriate life in Italy.

Then she met reality: no work, constant struggles with Italian bureaucracy to claim citizenship through her ancestors, and perhaps worst of all, becoming the talk of the town after her torrid affair with a local fruit vendor.

At Least You're in Tuscany is the intimate, honest, and often hilarious tale of Jennifer's first year in Montepulciano. During that time, Jennifer's internal optimist was forced to work overtime, reminding her that if she were going to be homeless, lonely, and broke, at least she would be all those things--in Tuscany.

Through all her small-town bumblings, though, Jennifer's mantra, along with a healthy dose of enthusiasm and willingness to learn about Italian culture, helped her not only build a new, rewarding life in Italy but also find herself along the way.

At Least You're in Tuscany is a very attractive book published by Gemelli Press, a small publishing house that specializes in books about Italy. 

 Visit the book's page at the Gemelli Press website.

Here is a direct link to the book editions, paperback and e-book, available via Amazon.com:

 

Visit the author's website and blog.

This review is by Candida Martinelli, of Candida Martinelli's Italophile Site, and the author of the cozy-murder-mystery novel AN EXTRA VIRGIN PRESSING MURDER, and the young-adult/adult mystery novel series THE VIOLET STRANGE MYSTERIES the first book of which is VIOLET'S PROBLEM.