Chow, bella!

Frances Mayes eats her way through travels, dishing up prose that's sometimes half-baked

Jenny Shank, Special to the News

Published March 17, 2006 at midnight

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If you've ever dreamed of hiking to the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, embarking on safari in Rwanda to observe gorillas in the wild, trying the spicy cuisine in China's Sichuan province, or snorkeling with sea turtles, rays, and sharks off the coast of Belize, then Frances Mayes' new travel book, A Year In The World, is not for you.

If, however, your dreams include sitting in a cozy café and sipping an excellent espresso, eating your way across Western Europe and shopping for rugs, jewelry and baby gifts on a trip where all exertion is incidental amid a culture not so different from your own, then Mayes has written your ideal guide.

The title of Mayes' book is slightly misleading; as she explains, the book contains her musings on several years of travel arranged by season, and the "world" she visits is somewhat circumscribed, as she ventures out of Western Europe on only two of the 14 journeys she describes. But the subtitle is completely accurate: Fans of Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun will recognize this "passionate traveller" as the woman whose joie de vivre prompted her to relocate to Italy and rehab an old house. As much as she loves her domestic life, Mayes is equally passionate about traveling, especially when it comes to sampling the local cuisine.

Indeed, it's only Mayes' enthusiasm and her gift for spirited language that keeps the first few sections of the book afloat, in which she discusses in great detail virtually every meal she consumes during trips to Andaluc'a and Portugal. One of the most pressing goals for Mayes and her husband during their time in Spain is to develop the gustatory stamina to eat a breakfast of churros, lunch, an early evening feast of tapas, and a late night dinner - all in one day.

Mayes writes, "This Spanish rhythm will take some getting used to: the tapeo (tapas) crawl from bar to bar in early evening, then dinner never before ten." But, heck, she gives it a try: "We try potatoes with a spicy mayonnaise and ham, marinated anchovies, chunky pork loin slices with a green pepper sauce, spinach with bacon and walnuts, and some mixed fried fish."

The best travel writing offers more than just lists and descriptions of accommodations, restaurants and museums - it supplies real insight into the culture through the people the author encounters. On some of their travels, Mayes and her husband Ed are too busy eating to get to know any locals, so it takes her a few chapters for the prose to rise above guidebook litanies, but it finally soars with the chapter on Naples, Italy. Mayes seems to write more vividly about countries whose language she knows. She supplies fewer rehashes of museum visits, and she's able to provide a more complete, nuanced portrait of this city than most guidebooks can.

Mayes debunks the rumors that many travelers have read or heard about Naples: "Don't cross into this area, avoid that street, wear a money belt, leave your jewelry at home. Thieves, indolence, corruption, chaos, grime, and murder by the Mafia. Actually, the Mafia is not interested in visitors, and the murder rate is considerably higher in most American cities than here. We're supposed to be afraid? We live in the Bay Area. I want to ask those writers who admonish you to beware of Naples: Heard of Oakland?" Even Italians disparage Naples: one of Mayes' Northern Italian friends advises her to leave her necklace at home.

Mayes traces the historic roots of this anti-Naples prejudice back to ancient travel writers who "scorched Naples with their prose. 'Naples is a paradise inhabited by devils,' goes an adage from back in the fourteenth century." Mayes, on the contrary, has a ball in the city, enjoying its "raucous energy," watching tango dancers in the street, exploring Old World neighborhoods, chatting with Catholic schoolgirls, and eating, of course (pizza Margherita, cannolo pastries, vegetable timbals, and more).

The chapter on Burgundy, France, is similarly vivid. Mayes often rents houses instead of staying in hotels because living in someone's home affords her a more complete interaction with the locale. But other people's houses can be hit or miss, and the one she rents in Burgundy is a miss: "Houses inevitably exude the essential sense of the owners, and so I start to invent narratives about the English owner's Early Ikea bed that smells like someone recently died there and the news he looked for in his stacks of ten-year-old newspapers. A baronial fireplace and a grand piano, combined with plastic chairs, leave me trying in vain to answer the question why? There's a novel there."

Mayes frequently discusses her favorite writers in the places where they lived, and in Burgundy she engages with Colette, a writer that she chose as the subject of her grad school oral exam in 1975. She knew little about the author when she decided to focus on her, but after reading many of her books, "soon Colette became my close friend. One of this life's pleasures: a writer's books can intersect with your life and lead you to the next largest space you can occupy."

Mayes imagines what she and Colette would eat for lunch in her Paris apartment, visits a Colette museum, and finds in the landscape, "a perfect tree for green-eyed Colette to climb," bringing to life the world of the long-dead writer.

Although Mayes enthuses over writers including Colette, Andaluc'a's Federico Garc'a Lorca and Britain's Joanna Trollope, and she sings the praises of chefs and cookbook authors that she encounters during her travels, there's another group of people toward whom she shows considerably less affection: Fat Americans. You'd think Mayes - who takes such evident joy in eating and confesses an aversion to exercise - would go a little easier on her beefier countrymen and women. But, like many American travelers abroad, there's nothing she likes less than ending up at a tourist destination packed with compatriots, and the first thing she often notices is how fat and poorly dressed they are.

Some of Mayes' most harrowing encounters with plump tourists come when she decides to visit Greece in summer despite the advice of an Italian friend who declares, "Greece is finished. . . . And summer - it is impossible. Heat and mobs, mobs and heat." Mayes decides to brave a cruise to Greece anyway because she's always wanted to visit the country, and her travels will be paid for in exchange for serving as a guest speaker aboard the cruise ship.

She examines the denizens of the cruise ship as if they were an unknown species, describing them in minute and humorous detail: "a red-haired beauty . . . looks as though she has somehow been expanded by a bicycle pump wears white Lycra so tight it fits like a plaster cast over her blimp-sized buttocks."

Despite their poor fashion and overabundance of flesh, Mayes still feels companionable toward her cruisemates, though she mostly keeps to herself. She doesn't have the same friendly feelings toward the hoards that greet them at tourist destinations, such as the Minoan ruins. They pour "off the bus into a steaming lot packed with other people streaming out of other heaving buses. Stained backpacks, water bottles, fat rear ends, pale flesh oozing out of tank tops, sweat, exhaust, belching, cameras - we herd into the beginnings of myth, the palace of King Minos."

The cruise to Greece is something of a bust, but Mayes finds some delights in all her destinations, despite coping with bouts of illness, lost luggage, panhandlers and other travel mishaps. Faithful as she is to her man Ed, Mayes is promiscuous when it comes to falling in love with countries, regions, towns and particular houses. She imagines herself living in almost every place that she visits, and often spots a home that she longs to give the full Under The Tuscan Sun treatment to. "One of those flash epiphanies of travel," Mayes writes, is "the realization that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them."

The sections of A Year in the World vary in detail and quality, but overall, the book is a good-humored, energetic account of one woman's travels that should most interest readers who long to visit Mediterranean countries or learn about the culinary specialties of that region. And maybe for her next installment of travel memoirs, Mayes will find some sharks to swim with - as long as she can eat them for dinner afterward, paired with the appropriate wine.

In person

• Frances Mayes will appear at a cocktail reception, including wines from Tuscany, from 5-6 p.m. Thursday at the Denver Press Club, 1330 Glenarm Place. The event is free; reservations required: 303-571-5260. Mayes will also appear 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Tattered Cover in Cherry Creek, 2955 E. First Ave. Information: 303-322-7727.

Jenny Shank was a semifinalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. She lives in Boulder.

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