Review: Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir by Frances Mayes

[khamneithang]

Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir by Frances Mayes is a deep, thoughtful and intensely honest but at times strikingly humorous recollection of a youthful life, brimming with optimism and the vagaries of life. While some may be a tad confused by the metaphors used, she revels in painting the perfect imagery for anyone with the proclivity to see it. Under Magnolia is a memoir that is both gentle and rough, a memoir that is crafted the way memoirs should be written.

What is stranger than memory, that selects a certain day to remain vivid, when thousands of others are totally lost? writes Mayes, which is an admission of the failings of the human mind to recollect memories of her childhood, in all its bits and pieces. What one can, it must go through the laborious process of sifting. What Mayes manages of her growing years in Fitzgerald, Georgia and how she fell in love with Tuscany is truly amazing. Her admiration and fascination for William Faulkner is evident by the quotes peppered all throughout the memoir. Visiting William Faulkner’s house, peeking through the window and conjuring up his life within its walls must have been of immense satisfaction for this young girl. In many ways, she has been genuinely influenced by the man who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and the Pulitzer Prize for The Reivers just before his death in July 1962.

Through this insightful memoir, Frances Mayes takes a leap back in time joining the dots of her life, giving in to the smells of magnolia as she once did, recalling the landscape of her youthful life, embracing the difficulties under which she grew up, fondly kissing the fragrances of the memories of all those dear people and all the places her feet trod, and in the process handing her readers a delightful and enjoyable memoir entitled Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir.