Book Chat: 'Tartufo' is the book we all need right now

It seems we might all be searching for some positive escapist reads these days, and who can blame us? There’s one type of book I’m drawn to again and again when this feeling hits: a book set in Italy.

A book set in Italy is my literary comfort food. Still Life by Sarah Winman carried me through a bleak month. The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza pulled me out of a reading slump last summer. The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell gave me the dark, atmospheric, historical novel escape I craved last winter.

What is it about Italy? It’s a place that captures the imagination. Its people are vivacious, full of fight. Its history is rich, ancient. And obviously, the food! The food casts a delicious spell on the page and off it. All this and more are perfectly captured in Tartufo by Kira Jane Buxton.

I picked up Tartufo on a whim, one of those rare books on NetGalley that called to me not because of its cover, a well-known author, or hype on Bookstagram or Booktok, but because of its premise: A rare, monstrously large white truffle (the largest ever found!) is unearthed in the fictional, dying Italian village of Lazzarini Boscorino, upending the lives of its inhabitants in a frenzy of greed, ambition, and existential crisis.

Because, as it turns out, a truffle is never just a truffle.

***

A Quirky Cast of Characters, Both Human and Not

There’s so much to love about Tartufo, but what makes it truly transportive is its fairytale-like quality—a story that feels like stepping into another world. From the very first page, the reader is met with a promise of enchantment:

“See-through scarves of scent curl from the forest and swirl toward a beautiful medieval village, perched upon a peak. Its tallest point an 11th century bell tower with memories of steel swords and shields.”

There is no single protagonist in Tartufo, but rather an ensemble cast of quirky characters that intersect, clash, and ultimately, orbit around the mysterious truffle. Among them are:

• Giovanni, the gentle, local truffle hunter, is something of a recluse—his past marked by heartbreak, his present consumed by his beloved dog Aria, a truffle-sniffing prodigy.

• Delizia, the mayor, carries the weight of the village’s survival on her shoulders, while also grappling with her own unresolved past.

• Chef Umberto, a Michelin-starred chef in the neighboring, far more polished tourist town of Borghese, once desperately hoped to escape the confines of his small hometown, Lazzarini Boscorino. Now, cast as something of a villain to the town he left behind, he finds himself worn down by the relentless pursuit of excellence and status.

• Giuseppina, the vivacious, spiritual, and fiery barista of the local (and, well, only) bar, is perhaps the town’s most larger-than-life character—and the most desperate to save it. Her marketing tactics are… unconventional:

“Giuseppina yanks up her singlet and bra, flashing a busload of wide-eyed tourists—her own dramatic take on waving a ‘save us’ sign from the sinking island of Lazzarini Boscorino.”

There’s more humor and delight in the way the author perfectly paints even minor characters. The village’s disgraced postman is “a wet weekend of a man.” The village priest is “a plump man of God, blessed with biblical black eyebrows like two Pekingese guarding the temples of his bald head.”

Buxton has a talent for not only funny descriptions but absurd dialogue and situations as well. One villager arrives in an elaborate papier-mâché costume, only for another to exclaim, horrified, “He has come dressed as a testicle!” (He was dressed as a truffle.)

Giuseppina, offended by a slight against her espresso, declares:

“My coffee is the fuel of this village! The elixir of life! It is why everyone here lives into their late nineties!”

To which another character dryly replies, “Yes, it’s essentially formaldehyde, you are preserving them all.” LOL.

But Tartufo’s real magic lies in its treatment of the non-human. The animals, the land itself, even the truffle—everything hums with personality, intent, and a touch of mischief, ready to mess with the humans they share the land with:

“The wind, pickled with flavors of the forest, ridden by the breath of the tiny god, tickles trees of olive and cyprus. Until it dangles its string of little calamities above cobblestone streets and terracotta roof tiles. And it settles upon the medieval village like a spell.”

Aria, Giovanni’s dog, is no mere pet—she’s a “dog-shaped burst of brown and white corkscrew curls” with “alert, almost-human hazel eyes.” She reads emotions in scent, from breakfast pastries to human sorrow (she sniffs out “sadness the color of crushed irises” in the village vet).

Buxton often takes a birds’-(or bees’?)-eye-view of a scene, painting sweeping, cinematic views of what’s happening down below in the human world. For instance, a honeybee embarks on a quest for nectar in a passage that reads like a miniature epic:

“A tiny Italian honeybee lifts above a patchwork quilt of vineyards and olive groves. She is on a life or death mission to find sweet sustenance. She flies fast… Below on the banquet table, the bee spots a steaming pot of farro and bean soup. Red velvet pillow on a pedestal cake stand, quietly waiting to flaunt the world’s largest truffle…. In a flash, a humongous hand is hurtling toward her. The bee is in for a head-on collision, human hand trawling the air right in front of her. Insect instincts light up. The bee flips her body in a mid-air turn. The split second flight maneuver spins her between two fingers as she narrowly misses a swatting.”

The menacing village patrol, a female cat named Al Pacino, is “best described as a cross between a crumpled tuxedo and a well-used toilet wand.”

Even the truffle itself is described in godlike terms, an ancient force lurking beneath the surface, waiting for its moment, “muscular and monstrously overgrown.”