Sunday Books & Culture
This weeks’ reviews include Kira Jane Buxton’s novel of sensory delights “Tartufo” and John Ellege’s enthralling history of the world’s borders in “A Brief History of the World’s 47 Borders.”
Sunday Books & Culture is edited by Vanessa Sekinger
TARTUFO
by Kira Jane Buxton
Published by Grand Central (January 28, 2025)
Paperback $18.99
Audiobook $15.28
Reviewed by Penny A Parrish
My friends: you will not “read” this book. You will inhale it through scents. You will see it through wondrous and vivid descriptions. You will feel it through characters so real, you’ll expect them to appear in your doorway. You will touch it though moss and dirt and cobblestones so real you’ll reach out for them. And of course you will taste it, or long to taste it, through the “tartufo” or truffle that is the basis of this delightful story.
In the little Italian village of Lazzarini Boscarino, elderly people gather at Bar Celebrita (named for celebrities who never visited the place but still have their photos on the wall). It is the only establishment clinging to life in the village where young people have left for a better life. Tourists only stop here for directions to other places. The new Mayor is Delizia, who narrowly won an election beating a geriatric donkey (he came in second) and the disgraced postman. Now she must tell the few remaining residents that her town is failing and that there is no money to fix what needs to be fixed. She can’t even hold the meeting at the town hall, as it is overrun with the poop of glis glis (dormice). The situation is dire indeed.
And then the truffle hunter Giovanni, with his truffle-hunting dog Aria, find a monster in the forest. A rare white truffle weighing more than six pounds! Such an epicurean treasure has never been discovered before. When the villagers get wind of it (yes, the smell of truffles permeates this book), they urge Giovanni to sell it and save their little Tuscan world.
An auction, run by Sotheby’s, is set up in the deserted castle above the village. Bidders from around the world want this tartufo, and some will stop at nothing to get it. Of course, things do not go as planned, and the author takes us on various twists and turns, each one revealing more about these local people, their lives, their troubles, their grudges. At one point, readers will encounter an NTF – non-fungible token which the villagers perceive as yet another kind of fungus.
You will hear from more than people. One chapter follows a bee looking for something sweet to take back to the hive. Another follows an ant that manages to invade a platter of pastry. And then there is Al Pacino (not the actor), a very pregnant cat that considers herself local law enforcement. What a treasure of people, critters, and nature in this book.
I marked dozens of favorite lines. “The foothills have settled into the quiet sepia colors of an old photograph.” “(Grape) vines planted in tiny lines like library books.”
And to sum up this culinary concoction of words:
“Love is a truffle. Delicate. A rarity that takes time to cultivate. A recipe of the right relationships.”
Full of humor and warmth, savor this literary feast.
Penny A Parrish is a local writer and photographer. Click here to see her pictures.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 47 BORDERS: SURPRISING STORIES BEHIND THE LINES ON OUR MAPS
by Jonn Elledge
Published by The Experiment (October 8, 2024)
Paperback $17.95
Audiobook $21.06
Reviewed by Drew Gallagher
The borders of the world and their stories of origin are fascinating (you’re going to have to trust me on this). Unless, of course, you are the President of the United States, and you think borders are conceptual and hardly a barrier to world domination and obscure minerals from the Periodic Chart of the Elements.
In John Elledge’s book, A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders, he does devote a chapter to “The American Invasion of Mexico” under James K. Polk, but does not ignore the current orange elephant in the room:
The first thing to say about the Trump Wall is that it is not, in fact, a wall. It would more accurately be described as ‘some fence’…There’s something else the wall debate has tended to skip, however: that those who did succeed in crossing the border would have remained on the land that had once been Mexican. It only stopped being so after the US won it in a war that sounds suspiciously like—there’s no easy way to say this—imperial expansion.
Canada, take note.
Elledge is British and imbues his book with a dry wit that turns even the most boring of borders into possible fodder for your next happy hour. If ever the happy hour conversation hits a lull, why not introduce the curious story of Severus Alexander with some asides on Julius Caesar and one of the other great walls in history—Hadrian’s. Consider the opening of the chapter titled “The Roman Limes and the Power of the Periphery”:
Severus Alexander must have felt he had a lot to live up to. Of his two names, one was drawn from his great-aunt’s husband, Septimius Severus, who had founded the dynasty which, at the turn of the third century, was in charge in Rome; the other was that of the greatest conqueror the world had ever know, the man who, half a millennium earlier, had brought lands from Greece to India under the control of tiny Macedon. Worse, he came to the imperial throne aged just thirteen—a difficult age for any boy, even without a fractious and tottering empire to manage—and in the full knowledge that his cousin had been murdered to clear his path.”
Spoiler Alert: “It didn’t go brilliantly” for young Severus, and it didn’t end especially well either, but somehow the shifting borders of the Roman Empire through the centuries become page-turners. And whenever Elledge senses that the attention of his reader might be waning, he artfully inserts a footnote that is insightful and can also call into question lyrics from a Moody Blues’ song when discussing the meeting of British adventurer Henry Stanley and the Christian missionary David Livingstone in the Congo and the famous introduction: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”
Actually, he may have done nothing of that sort. Livingstone never mentioned these words; the relevant pages of Stanley’s journal were mysteriously torn out. But it made the meeting between the only two white men for hundreds of miles sound gentlemanly, rather than sinister, which tells us something about the spirit of the age all the same.
One theme that is consistent in reading about these assorted 47 borders of the world is that men can be especially cruel to their fellow man. As Karl Marx once reflected: “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.”
Drew Gallagher is a freelance writer residing in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is the second-most-prolific book reviewer and first video book reviewer in the 140-year history of the Free Lance-Star Newspaper. He is also the first humorist in the storied history of the FXBG Advance and is reliant upon his editors to know when to use commas.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”