About book The Reluctant Tuscan: How I Discovered My Inner Italian (2006)
This book is entertaining at times but does not cross over into being particularly enchanting. The author is a TV writer in his fifties named Phil Doran who has begun feeling cast aside by all of the up and comers in Hollywood. His sculptor wife Nancy has been working in Italy several months a year, every year, for most of their marriage, and the story starts as she excitedly tells him about her purchase of a run down rustic villa and her hopes to rebuild it with him. The couple does not have children, and they have worked out an arrangement of living parallel lives which seems to have worked for them while each was enjoying some measure of success in his / her respective occupations. Once the author begins experiencing continuous rejection as a sit com television writer, though, the dynamics of their marriage shifts. He begrudgingly leaves their trophy house in Brentwood, California to join his wife in Italy to help renovate the three hundred year old farmhouse in Tuscany.The book recounts their various mishaps and adventures as Americans trying to start a new life in Italy. Much of the book is about the rehabilitation of their house and navigating the Italian culture and Byzantine political system to get it done. Although the story is quite good in many ways, especially when the author is describing some of his new neighbors and their very unique personalities, it still feels like a remake of some other books which did it first and did it better. Doran has a rather sarcastic point of view which works some of the time but not all the time, and when it doesn't, it sounds like he is just making fun of the locals. He has a hard time leaving behind his dreams and aspirations for a renewed career in Los Angeles even when he begins to appreciate the joys of expatriate life. He and Nancy experience a number of hurdles to their goal of rehabbing the house, and their relationship hits many road blocks along the way, and even though it's somewhat interesting at times, he didn't make me really care much one way or another.
The Reluctant Tuscan was a different type of book for me to read. I purchased it several years ago and would get a few pages in and then set it down for another book that held my attention better. This time, however, I managed to pick it up AND complete it! The book itself is a true story that starts with an American couple - Nancy is an artist, Phil is a TV writer in LA. The wife has moved to Tuscany to work as a sculptor. While there she buys a fixer upper. A break in work/projects for Phil has him hopping the pond to visit and check out what Nancy bought. It felt a bit like a reverse "Green Acres" for a long period in the book - she likes the countryside and he still misses LA, but they vow to make it work.Not surprisingly, the road to fixing up their Italian home meets with plenty of paperwork, some Italian delays, nosy neighbors, etc. There is no real consistency with the stories or the chapters, but some of the happenings lined up with vacation experiences that I myself have had in Italy (namely all shops shutting down mid-afternoon and the frequency of strikes in the country).As should be expected, while just being in Italy and entrenched in the lifestyle Phil finds himself changed for the better: great wine, interesting people, a slower pace - all good things! The book winds up with a celebration in which everyone in the town and countryside stops in to join in the fun. It wouldn't be Italy without a few hiccups, so those come into play as well.While it will never be a "favorite" for me, this was a fun book and a mental trip back to Italy for me. I enjoyed it!
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This is a very pleasant book about a man rather unwillingly giving up his Type A Hollywood lifestyle to restore and live in an abandoned rustic house in rural Tuscany. It’s a fun easy read, and one that I enjoyed very much.For twenty years the author has been a writer of television scripts in Hollywood. His wife of twenty years (no children) is an artist and sculptor, and they spend half the year apart, with him in Hollywood and she sculpting in Italy. Just when he realizes that fifty-year-old television writers are dinosaurs, his wife phones him with the news that she has purchased a three-hundred year old house on a hillside in rural Tuscany that needs, to put it mildly, extensive repair and remodeling work.The author thus joins his wife in Tuscany, but still misses the breakneck pace of life in Los Angeles; while his wife is wholehearted devoted to this old house, he takes every chance he gets to suggest going home to California. But he eventually realizes that he loves the pace of life in Tuscany, even as he and his wife gain weight from the cooking and fight to get necessary building permits.This is a gentle book, and funny; but it also gives good lessons for Type-A people (and the rest of us) to enjoy life, and to enjoy life to its fullest.
—Kathryn
This was a quick and amusing read about an ex-pat American starting his life over in Italy. I didn't realize it at first, by the author was a TV producer/writer on some of my favorite TV shows. (He doesn't mention which shows so I Googled his name.) Feeling burned out by fast-paced Hollywood life, his artist wife convinces him to join her in Italy. He reluctantly agrees and arrives to discover that she has bought a rundown old farmhouse in Tuscany. Chaos ensues as they try to get building permits, approval, loans, etc all while feuding with the neighbors. A bad accident causes him to examine his life and make serious decisions about his future. This book is worth a read if you like Italian culture or funny memoirs.
—Janet
As long as there are human beings on earth, I think, there will be books of this genre. Yes, yet another "outsider goes to foreign country and has amusing experiences with the quirky locals". These books practically write themselves, because it is a simple fact that wherever you go on earth, there will be crazy people doing crazy things. And, as any writer knows, these experiences beg to be written down. But sometimes the most frequently used formulas are the best, and that is why these books will continue to be entertaining, no matter how many you read. At least, that's the way I feel about it. That being said, all you really need to know is that it takes place in Tuscany.
—Liz
