The Reluctant Tuscan

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Very disappointing and contrived - Rated
Oh dear, I really wanted to enjoy this book as I love Tuscany - we have a house there - and it seemed so promising - he's a screenwriter, so am I. But the people they encountered characters were so contrived, just stereotypes - did you really meet this people or did you make them up. Sorry. I didn't get past the first 30 pages and then gave up.

WELL, YOU CAN'T PLEASE EVERYONE ALL THE TIME - Rated
Book shelves bulge with stories by those who have sought health and happiness in a foreign country. However, "The Reluctant Tuscan" is a memoir of another stripe. Peter Mayle wrote of his frustrations in restoring a hotel in Provence with whimsy and affection. After reading the iconic "Under the Tuscan Sun," we dreamed of booking a flight on Alitalia. Few will want to join sitcom writer Phil Doran in his 300-year-old Italian farmhouse, as this is a man who not only went kicking and screaming to the hills of Tuscany but did a fair share of kvetching once he arrived.

While still in California the once in demand Doran found himself viewed as a bit of a dinosaur as the younger writers were leaving him in the dust. He'd been married for a quarter of a century to Nancy, a sculptor, who frequently visited Italy for work and study. Perhaps her extended visits were for the best as their relationship was a bit rocky.

Nancy had some thoughts about this and decided the remedy was for Phil to move to Italy. To that end she purchased an old farmhouse badly in need of repair - reconstruction might be more accurate. She is, in his description, somewhat of a "nest builder," someone who wants to make things beautiful. "When she sees a house she wants to redo," he writes, "she gets a look on her face like a fifteen-year-old boy on a topless beach."

From the first, when he swelters in a closed plane on the runway because the ground crew can't open the doors, we know Phil won't find much to love in Italy. In his eyes, the house is worse than he could have imagined. It was such a heap that it didn't even have an address. It's one asset was its location - atop a hill. The problem was there wasn't any road leading to it, so Nancy put one in completely unaware that she was breaking a number of local laws.

The house had been purchased from the Pingatore family who now want it back - want it so badly that a crone, Vesuvia Pingatore, fixed them with an evil eye, a malocchio. Her figure can be seen watching them from her window.

With every setback in rebuilding their home, Phil is ready to return to California, completely frustrated by a country that seems to have millions of laws but no rules, and considers a two hour lunch a birthright.

However, in time he wonders if he really wants to go back to the world of mega egos "vainglorious self-promotion, and monumental insincerity." After all, he's finally learning not to put Parmesan cheese on pasta with seafood and not to drink coffee until after a meal.

Italophiles will enjoy this return to a fabled country, even when guided by a very, very reluctant Tuscan.

- Gail Cooke