Vorab-Rezensenten

A lyrical and riveting memoir of Frances Mayes’s coming of age in the Deep South, and of the region’s powerful influence on her life “At a few times in my life, I’ve not been aware that I’ve just stepped onto a large X,” begins Under Magnolia. The author of three beloved books about her life in Tuscany, Frances Mayes recreates in her new memoir these large, mysterious X’s, moments of change, among the people and places that defined her early years in Fitzgerald, Georgia. With her signature style and grace, Mayes delves deeply into the power of landscape, the idea of home, and the force of a chaotic and loving family. From her years as a spirited, secretive child, through her university studies—a period of exquisite freedom that imbued her with a profound appreciation of friendship and a love of travel—to her escape to a new life in California, Mayes recreates her world of intense relationships and her passionate connection with the land she sprang from. Using the precise sense memories that define her previous memoirs, Mayes writes an unforgettable story of a girl whose perspicacity and dawning self-knowledge lead her out of the South, and into the rest of the world. Under Magnolia, too, chronicles a present-tense, surprising rediscovery of the changed yet still achingly familiar and beloved South. This is a searingly honest, humorous, and moving ode to family and place, and a thoughtful meditation on the ways they define us, or cause us to define ourselves.