Grand Central Publishing
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In her novel “Tartufo” (Grand Central Publishing), Kira Jane Buxton (the author of “Hollow Kingdom” and “Feral Creatures”) captures the comedy of truffle-mania in a tiny Tuscan village, upon the discovery of the world’s largest truffle.
Read an excerpt below.
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The wisest souls say that pure mountain air makes us all go a little mad. A wind—lawless and long-tailed—slices through the snow-stippled Apuan alps and the Apennines with all the wantonness of La Befana, the winter witch. Swifts catch this wind on their wings, carving up the crisp blue morning. Dipping down into the valley, the wind now worries over the murmuring blue tongue of the Serchio river on its journey to the Tyrrhenian Sea. It slips—an unseen spirit—under Devil’s bridge. Shivers along the great gray hunch of the Devil’s back. Hissing over every ancient stone. Rising from the river, the wind picks up speed, hastening toward the woods. Hurtling toward chestnut trees spaced like the pews of a great Duomo. The wind now weaves between golden leaves. Whispering quick consonants between the branches, borrowing an autumnal aura. Sweet sigh of ripe chestnuts and shed leaves. And here—where the wind steals woodland scents—hides a curiosity. Cloistered by soil, moss, stone and leaf litter, a thing unseen—a thing quite mysterious—lies in waiting.
A thing that sits buried, like old bones.
What lies under the soil has stayed secret. It is an underground barterer. A schemer who has set a trap in the soil. A sylvan swindler. A tormentor.
A tiny god.
Swelling to irresistible bulk, it has ripened into a knobbled fruit of corruption. And now the time has come. The tiny god releases a lusty sigh, soundlessly unfurling a phantom into the wind.
No more visible than the notes of nightingale song.
No more audible than a wordless wish.
The tiny god has released a cipher.
The breath of the tiny god is whisked away by the breeze, slipping through the damp woodland of chestnut worship. Deeper into the woods, the breath in the breeze paints the pupils of a fallow deer into great glistening lakes. Fur stiffens along a back freckled in the white of first snow. The doe salivates in answer to the call of the stranger she can smell but cannot see. Her nostrils flutter, messages flood her bloodstream. But the breath blows on.
Now a wild sow lifts her moist snout from the leaf litter and inhales a slip of the wind. Instantly intoxicated, her muddy snout snuffing. The grunting sow is aroused into a frenzy. Bristled legs stab at the soil as she arranges them to assume her stance, ready to receive the boar she smells. Turning her head toward her tail, she hunts for him, but—and here is the trick, here is the olfactory deception—there is no boar and the breeze blows on through the woods, fanning the sensual scent along with it.
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. 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.
Excerpted from “Tartufo” by Kira Jane Buxton. Copyright © 2025 by Kira Jane Buxton. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.
Get the book here:
Buy locally from Bookshop.org
For more info:
- “Tartufo” by Kira Jane Buxton (Grand Central Publishing), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available January 28
- kirajanebuxton.com
