In three other rooms, we found painted brocade walls, a nineteenth-century stencil, and a room painted in stripes. The plaster had to be replaced, and behind it here was this amazing fresco covered for probably a couple of hundred years. Since writing A Place in the World, I have been stunned to find several decoratively painted walls in Bramasole. What is amazing is how old houses continue to reveal their secrets. I found a trove of publications in a special case in the Hillsborough library, even brochures on gardens written by the owner of Chatwood who established its gardens. One was removed in a renovation and deserved to be kept. When we sold the place, I carefully organized everything and handed it on, including a piece of beam carved with Roman numerals from the original 1806 construction. My old farm, Chatwood, came to me with a sheaf of information previous owners passed on to each next buyer. What are some resources you suggest people look into for learning about their own homes or neighborhoods? Have you learned anything new since writing this book you want to share? Will they roll their eyes, will they be pleased? I often think of my husband, my daughter, and a few friends while I am writing. I write because I love that surge of engagement when trying to find the right words. For example, entering a room: The visual impact is extended by the scent of old flower water in a vase, the slush and fall of low tide outside the window, a ginger cat stretching, the lift of linen curtains-that kind of immediacy, which causes participation from the reader, while creating a setting for action. When describing, I try to include several sensory elements so that a reader responds with mind and body. Writing comes from so many sources-pleasure, betrayal, excitement, tragedy, astonishment-and the joy is that I have had the experience, and then to write about it gives it back to me again. To recreate in words an experience, a place, a taste, a person is quite an aspiration. We share the beauty of the land, the sadness of racial strife, good manners, the glory and idiocy of die-hard individuality, an age-old hospitality, weird weddings and funerals, and thousands of other things.Īn ancient Chinese poet said to create an image is to live twice. There is a long section in my book about that-about heat mirages, sinkholes, tornados, rivers, swamps, hurricanes, crocodiles, lost valleys where there is still a twinge of old English, front porch music, storytelling (some quite boring), on and on. I always felt wedded to the drastic power of the place itself.

In college, we literature students, steeped in the great Southern writers, were told the bond came from the South being the only American place to have fought and lost a war on its own soil. Because we have a shared attachment to the complicated, intense, and gorgeous swath of Earth that is the South, we recognize an accent coming from the next table, and we bond. Have you ever noticed how Southerners meeting by chance in Istanbul, Perth, wherever in the world, instantly connect? Before long, the degrees of separation are breached, and you know who went to Vanderbilt and who owned the car dealership in Hawkinsville and whose mama delivered all the babies in Tuscaloosa. You use a beautiful phrase early on in the new book: “the Southern instinct for place.” What is that instinct, and how does it manifest among Southerners? (The book feels like a warm conversation with your most thoughtful, curious friend.) Here, the author divulges more about the book, her favorite places in little Hillsborough, her beloved heirloom roses, and how she feels about polenta versus grits.

Fellow Mayes fans will delight in her musings on flowers, accents, and housekeeping. A Place in the World, the latest book by Frances Mayes.Ī Place in the World is a charming read, with surprise recipes both Italian and Southern.

Lemon stripes