Food and drink, new friends and neighbors, the non-human inhabitants of her house and land, the joys and frustrations of foreign gardening, the colors and textures and tastes daily encountered are all given their moments. It's not all sweeping vistas and Renaissance churches in this telling Mayes transforms the details of daily life, and she considers big questions, too. The real genius here, though, is in the scope.

She's constantly delighted with new discoveries, and she shares them in such a way that you can share them, too.

Plenty of 'place writing' does a disservice to the locations it tries to praise, but Mayes isn't just in love with Tuscany, she's also an astonishingly good writer, and she's sensitive to the fact that she is an outsider and therefore writes as one who does not 'know' the culture. The writing is poetically beautiful, illuminating a place that is equally so. Regardless, don't let the naysayers dissuade you from giving it a try. I've had three people now (all men =p) tell me it's 'chicklit.' First of all, is that supposed to be an insult? Second: What? Perhaps this all has something to do with how popular the book was and continues to be. Cunning, alert, and deliciously irresponsible, Burgess brilliantly invents a private history of sexual desire and betrayal lurking behind the blank face that looks out from the First Folio.I hear a lot of crap about how this book is silly, fluffy, boring, slow, unstructured, unserious. Nothing Like the Sun is a wildly inventive, verbally dazzling attempt to enter the secret chambers of Shakespeare's inner life.

Starting with the young Will, the novel is a romp that follows Will's maturation into sex and writing.īurgess can remake reality not only in his own writing but also in a new perception of the writings of his subject.- 'New York Times Book Review' A playful romp, it is at the same time a serious look at the forces that midwife art, the effects of time and place, and the ordinariness that is found side by side with the extraordinariness of genius.įrom the Back Cover 'Nothing Like The Sun' is a magnificent, bawdy telling of Shakespeare's love life. About the Book 'Wildly inventive' -Stephen Greenblatt, author of The SwerveĪ magnificent, bawdy telling of Shakespeare's love life, following young Will's maturation into sex and writing.

Nothing like the sun novel