[3] The story details the trials that recently divorced Frances and her new significant other, Ed, had to go through to renovate their Tuscan property, an abandoned villa named Bramasole ("longing for the sun") in rural Cortona in Tuscany.

[5] A Publishers Weekly review stated, "The recently divorced author is euphoric about the old house in the Tuscan hills that she and her new lover renovated and now live in during summer vacations and on holidays.

A poet, food-and-travel writer, Italophile and chair of the creative writing department at San Francisco State University, Mayes is a fine wordsmith and an exemplary companion whose delight in a brick floor she has just waxed is as contagious as her pleasure in the landscape, architecture and life of the village.

"[7] 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.

"[8] 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.