her observations about being at home in two very different cultures are sharp and wise." Alida Becker of The New York Times wrote, "Her book is a romance for people who'd rather read M. F. K. Fisher than Barbara Cartland. There are nods to Gaston Bachelard's Poetics of Space, insights into Renaissance painting and references to James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but what Ms. Mayes mostly provides are the kind of satisfyingly personal crotchets and enthusiasms you might exchange with an old friend over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table (though most people can't do this in a kitchen that was originally a chapel and later housed oxen and chickens). Casual and conversational, her chapters are filled with craftsmen and cooks, with exploratory jaunts into the countryside -- but what they all boil down to is an intense celebration of what she calls "the voluptuousness of Italian life." Jason Wilson of The New Yorker commented, " I recently revisited "Under the Tuscan Sun" this year, on the occasion of its twentieth anniversary, and discovered that my opinion of the book has grown ever so slightly more generous with age. This is not to say that I found the book free of flaws the second time around. For one, it contains virtually no narrative conflicts; each incident that could potentially cause tension gets resolved within paragraphs or, at most, a few pages." Film In 2003, the book was adapted into major international feature film, Under the Tuscan Sun, written, produced, and directed by Audrey Wells and starring Diane Lane, Sandra Oh, Lindsay Duncan, and Raoul Bova. The film was nominated for the Art Directors Guild Excellence in Production Design Award, and Diane Lane received a Golden Globe Award nomination for her performance. References 1996 books Memoirs adapted into films Literary memoirs Novels set in Tuscany