The Reluctant Tuscan: How I Discovered My Inner Italian FROM THE PUBLISHER
In the witty tone that made Phil Doran a success as a writer in Hollywood, The ReluctantTuscan will captivate a wide audience, from those who simply love a captivating travel narrative to anyone who loves the quirky humor of Bill Bryson, Dave Barry, and Jerry Seinfeld.
After years of working on a string of successful sitcoms, Doran found that just as he and his peers had replaced the older guys when he was coming up, it was now happening to him. And it was freaking him out. He came home every night burned-out, angry, and exhausted. But even if he hadn't had enough, his wife, Nancy, had. After twenty-five years of losing her husband to Hollywood, Doran's wife decided it was finally time for a change—so on one of her many solo trips to Italy she surprised her husband by purchasing a broken-down three-hundred-year-old farmhouse for them to restore. The Reluctant Tuscan is the author's transition from a successful but overworked writer-producer in Hollywood to someone rediscovering himself and his wife while in Italy, finding happiness in the last place he expected to.
Doran finds himself navigating through the maddening labyrinth of Italian bureaucracy just to get a road paved to their house; dealing with the foibles of their neighbors and the tangled drama of the family who sold them the home; coming to accept that the Italians live with a million laws and no rules—all while he becomes slowly seduced by the inexhaustible beauty and tactile pleasures of Tuscany.
Author Biography: A TV producer for more than twenty-five years, Phil Doran worked as a writer- producer for such successful shows as Sanford and Son, Too Close for Comfort, Who's the Boss?, and The Wonder Years, as well as writing episodes of The Bob Newhart Show and writing for such variety-show stars as Tim Conway, the Smothers Brothers, and Tony Orlando. He received an Emmy nomination, a Humanitas Award, and the Population Institute Award for his work on All in the Family. He has also written a screenplay for Tri- Star, two stage plays that were produced in Los Angeles, and travel articles for the Los Angeles Times. He and his wife divide their time between Tuscany and their home in California.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Readers of Doran's amusing memoir about relocating from Los Angeles to the tiny Tuscan town of Cambione must first suspend their disbelief that a person in his right mind would actively resist such an opportunity. But resist Doran does-and when his sculptor wife buys a ramshackle, 300-year-old house there on a whim, she must drag him kicking and screaming out of his high-stress, low-reward life as a Hollywood writer and producer (among his hits: Who's the Boss? and The Wonder Years). What follows is rather predictable: the house turns out to be in even worse shape than anyone imagined, and the construction crew has no "discernable pattern" when it comes to showing up for work. Lines like "Things happen in Italy that don't happen anywhere else on earth. A magical friendliness is spread all over the place like pixie dust" don't do much to distinguish Doran's story from other books of its ilk, but the author's grudging optimism and dead-on ear for dialogue certainly do. Doran's brutally funny accounts of tangles with everyone (including the mayor, the police, an inefficient landlord and Doran's long-suffering wife) are enough to keep readers hooked until the last page. It may not be a surprise that he lives happily ever after, but how he gets there is certainly worth the ride. Agent, Betsy Amster. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
After spending 25 years writing and producing popular television shows like Who's the Boss? and The Wonder Years, Doran was approached by his wife, who thought he needed a change. Her proposal: restore a house in Italy and leave the stress (and success) of Los Angeles behind. Doran agrees, but only grudgingly; thus this story is born. It is as much about Doran's struggle with a television industry that considers him a "relic" and his fight to reconnect with his wife as it is about restoring a 300-year-old farmhouse in a small Italian village chock-full of colorful characters and plenty of bureaucracy. Doran handles all of it with curmudgeonly wit that is the book's greatest strength. With the recent popularity of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun and the companion movie, Doran's title may prove appealing to patrons looking for a more sardonic take on life, love, marriage, retirement, and Tuscany. Recommended for public libraries.-Mari Flynn, Keystone Coll., La Plume, PA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
He gave up television for a home in Tuscany, and he grouses about it? Yes, writer-producer Doran's comic transplanting from Los Angeles to rural Italy initially wrenched at the moorings of his wayward self-esteem, though it eventually cut him a new and better course. After 25 years, the successful sitcom veteran found himself struggling against the next wave, the young guys who were washing the old ones into the sea of unemployment. Fortunately, his wife was arranging a new life for them in Italy, where she had purchased a 250-year-old stone farmhouse atop a hill of olive trees outside the town of Combione. Will this be another self-congratulatory memoir of a well-off couple moving into the silvery haze of a midlife rejuvenation along the Mediterranean, throwing brickbats and dollars at the foibles of the locals? Thankfully, no. Doran is a deeply neurotic character, a man subject to anxiety attacks and facial tics when things go against him. It took him months to know a good thing when it bit his ankle. The stress of moving house, the troublesome brood living next door, the zealous bureaucratic confrontations, and the standard delays in getting anything done all drove him into a state of collapse. But he also came to realize that he had fed at the trough of Hollywood long enough and lived in his own skull too many years. His narrow band of emotions would be better served by a scream or a loud laugh, Doran concluded. He vented his "inner Italian," the part that craved to savor life at full throttle, to e-mail his agent to stick it, to get married again (to the same woman). Sure, he sometimes broke into a sweat but he also slipped into a new life without the advantage of pharmo-chemicals.Bets are that Doran spends more time in Italy now than he does in California. Agent: Betsy Amster/Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises
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