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France Mayes is author of the memoir Under the Tuscan Sun, a long-running bestselling memoir-turned-movie that inspired generations of travelers to drink deeply of the tastes and country-sides of Italy. The irrepressible octogenarian has published a new novel, A Great Marriage. Here, she shares her thoughts with The Ethel on writing, aging and what it takes for love to go the distance.
Robin: I’m always in awe of the beauty that surrounds you — those stunning dinner tables under twinkle lights, surrounded by family and friends. Did you always have this love for cooking?
Frances: Yes, I come from a very big food family. Growing up in Georgia, we’d be talking about what’s for dinner at the midday meal. We had a cook, and she was absolutely marvelous and inventive. My mother was too. I think I absorbed a passion for food, but I wasn’t interested in it at all when I was younger.
Robin: Were you a child who sat around the kitchen listening to stories while the cooking was going on?
Frances: Yes, of course, the dining room table was always the center of action whether it was happy, or unhappy. I remember most the monumental cakes my mother made. Coconut cake that looked like it was a foot tall with many layers, something called lemon cheesecake which wasn’t a cheesecake — it had kind of a curd filling — beautiful chocolate cakes, and the Lane cake was phenomenal. My mother was always coming in the dining room holding up a big cake. I would make cookies but that was about the extent of my interest in cooking.
Robin: You’re so observant, Frances. I think that’s what makes your writing resonate — especially the poetic nuances. Have you always been a writer?
Frances: I started writing when I was eight years old, trying to write poetry, and I was always a big reader. I still have the reading log I kept all through high school. Reading and writing are so linked. I became a writer because I loved to read.
Robin: I love how your memoir inspires change through the stories that you are sharing. You’ve inspired so many readers about dealing with divorce and love of travel.
Frances: Travel a lot, divorce not so much! After the book became so popular, I began to see a lot of women coming to Cortona. I knew from watching them having coffee in the piazza every morning that they were on a quest. They were here for some reason, very personal, and I would see them writing in their journals, sketching, getting on the bicycle and I knew those women.
I became very curious about that deep impulse of traveling. That’s what catapulted me into writing travel books, but it also inspired me to write Women in Sunlight. It’s about three women who are getting old and their families are trying to convince them to simplify and to dumb down, go into retirement communities, to kind of shut up. So, they go on a quest together. And because these are women who had plans for themselves when they were young and didn’t get to do what they wanted — life happened — in their 70s I gave them a new outlook, new avenues, and new life. That stemmed back to the idea of travel as a quest that I started developing after I wrote Under the Tuscan Sun. Initially, I came to Italy for the art. I wanted to see the things I had studied in college. I came here as a place of solitude to write, and I had no idea that I was entirely changing my life.
Robin: One of my favorite lines in A Great Marriage is “I’ve never discovered a cure for betrayal.” What is that about for you?
Frances: Betrayal was the reason I wrote the book. I wanted to explore an aspect of betrayal. Everybody has experienced betrayal in some way or another. I happened to have a family secret come out four years ago and everybody in my family had kept this secret for 25 years. I found out by chance, and I was stunned because I was the child who always eavesdropped, looked through the peephole, who’d rifle through the papers, and nobody kept any secrets from me! I found out that my relative had done something that I was shocked by, and I couldn’t believe it and he had since died so there was no talking to him about it.
It was churning around in my head, this betrayal. So, I had my character, Austin, be involved in a betrayal. It wasn’t totally his fault, but it was still a betrayal. And I had him take a whole different path and undo what my relative did. It was my chance to redo history!
Robin: What can generations in a family learn from each other about love? How is that incorporated into A Great Marriage?
Frances: Your concept of marriage is certainly informed by those, good, bad or indifferent, that you know in your own family and those you see around you as you grow up. Some will be the lesson of “I’ll never put up with someone like Daddy,” or will define for you when it’s time for a good divorce. Knowing a sweet marriage gives you a standard and you’re wise not to settle for less. Lucky if you have parents like my character Dara has. She knows a great marriage when she sees one. When her coming marriage sends up warning flares, she knows just what to do.
Robin: So the message about forever love in A Great Marriage is …
Frances: Change is constant and if you stay focused on making the best life possible for your partner you’re going to ride the waves.
Robin: What would you tell your younger self about love?
Frances: I was hopelessly romantic as a young woman. I think I was right to fall in love over and over. What I would whisper in her ear is hard-earned advice: Marry someone who totally sees you as an equal.
Robin: What’s next?
Frances: I don’t know yet, I’m sitting at my desk now looking around wondering what’s going to be happening here. When we came back here after the book tour. We went on vacation to Puglia and then I just got back a couple of days ago and I’m considering another novel or, I'm really inclined to write a book of essays.
Robin: Do you have any wisdom to share on aging?
Frances: I tend to avoid discussions of age because women get slotted so easily no matter what. I really don’t want to dwell on that because it skews priorities. If you’re this then you must be that … I will say I have all the energy I ever had, I have all the curiosity I ever had, and I have not yet felt any limitation of age.
I experience my friends dying, battling illnesses, and can’t help but dwell on that quite a bit. But in terms of my everyday life, I’m just the same person I’ve always been. I think women are brainwashed about looking young, so brainwashed about comparing themselves with ever-younger celebrities, and it’s just such a bore. Even when I was 50, people were writing articles about me and endlessly they’d say how old are you and I’d say, "what does that have to do with this book?” I think so many women internalize the misogyny of the culture.
Have you read any books by Frances Mayes? Which one? Let us know in the comments below.
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