Every time I find a scrawled-on business card, or a packet of dill from Finland, or a photo of a tiny baby left for me, I’m thrilled again. Now he’s gone, but readers leave notes, coins, pinecones, lovely handmade gifts, wine and always flowers. In early summers here, a mysterious man visited the shrine at the entrance to my garden every day, offering to the Virgin a handful of wild fennel or dog roses. This summer a Hungarian brought me rose cuttings from his grandmother’s garden. Of the gifts that came back to me from writing, an Italian sense of time may be number one.įor these many years, readers have come to visit me at Bramasole, my adopted home in Tuscany. The hijinks of movie-making were rolled right into the everyday life of a piazza that has endured for centuries. The Italians have seen barbarian hordes before. When the trucks of people and gear arrived to make the movie of Under the Tuscan Sun, I worried about the disruption it would bring to the community. I absorbed a new sense of time – slower here, less urgent. I never regretted plunking down my life savings on the decadent and romantic villa on a hillside overlooking where Hannibal defeated the Romans in 217 BC. Photograph: Shaiith/Getty Images/iStockphoto Some of the best decisions we make come from that inner voice that says “Why not?” That says “ Andiamo.” So much disappointment arises from what is desired but not chosen. When I sprang from my comfortable university career into a new life in a foreign country, I took a big risk.
My own decision came from a deep instinct. How to go forward? How to live? I began to see that something crucial had come through to readers: if I can do it, you can too. The underlying message always: an acute awareness of choices. Even: I have always wanted a blue bicycle. Or: I am giving up law to study cooking in Italy.
And: I would like to be extant in another version. I knew walking down the aisle that I didn’t love him enough. I liked the vulnerable, explicit confessions and desires. Through their letters, I became a confidante to strangers who felt like friends. At book signings, I connected with readers from Kansas City to Cannes. The first thing the book sent back to me: thousands of faces. I began to see that something crucial had come through to readers: if I can do it, you can too Now, to my astonishment, people in 50-odd countries have read and still are reading my story. The book eventually hit the bestseller lists, including the New York Times, where it remained for two and a half years.
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