A few years ago, I read Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. She painted beautiful scenes of Tuscany and the Italian way of life. Although she and her partner had difficulties while renovating their Tuscan villa, I was still ready to quit my job and move to Tuscany just to partake in the tranquil, late afternoon lunches and evening walks on the piazza.

In The Reluctant Tuscan, Phil Doran takes the same setting and story line, renovating a 300 year old farm house in Tuscany, and turns it into a sit-com. This shouldn’t be surprising as Phil Doran was a sit-com writer and producer for 25 years. The book was an easy read and good for a laugh. Some characters were so over-the-top, I wondered what was true and what was caricature.

This was Dino, who traveled everywhere with a mangy pack of dogs named Ninja, Luna, Torpedo, Cosimo, Scheherazade, Pipistrello, Puccini, and Tiberius. The dogs swarmed around him peeing, pooping, snarling, and fornicating, while Dino, oblivious, went about his business.

Flavia was an energetic lady who, had circumstances been different, could have enjoyed a flourishing career in public relations, given her fondness for throwing in flattering sobriquets for each person she introduced us to. Thus, the dour, cantankerous old man muttering to himself in the corner became the “irrepressible” Uncle Carmuzzi. The hulking, barrel-chested guy stuffing himself with crostini was the “urbane” Cousin Aldo. The three black-shrouded old women huddled together like a scene out of Macbeth were the “convivial” Nina, Nona, and Nana. And finally, the pompous aesthete holding court on the sofa was introduced as the “genial” Dottore Spotto, with his wife, the “pious” Monica, and their “mythically gifted” children Leonardo, Rafael, and la bimba Artemisia.

Phil and his wife, Nancy, navigate their way through their trials with government bureaucracy, meddling neighbors, unreliable construction contractors, and even an used car salesman; typical American scenarios, but somehow funnier when placed in the Tuscan landscape. If Bill Bryson and Dave Barry are more your style than Frances Mayes, this is the Tuscan travel guide for you.