The Fly–Truffler - Softcover

Sobin, Gustaf

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393321797 ISBN 13: 9780393321791

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001

Synopsis

Philippe Cabassac has fly-truffled-the art of stalking the flies that lay their eggs directly over the truffles-every winter since childhood on his family estate in Provence. Since the death of his young wife, Julieta, the truffles have come to represent something far more than a delicacy for Cabassac's palate: they trigger an evocative sequence of dream visions in which he and his lost wife enter, on winter nights, a state of intimate and prolonged communion. As Cabassac becomes increasingly involved in his dream life with Julieta, he loses his hold on his teaching obligations, on managing his estate, on his waking life altogether. Set against the fading of traditional Provencal culture and an incandescent Mediterranean landscape, The Fly- Truffler celebrates a love that, by its very ardor, outlasts a lifetime. Reading group guide included.

About this title

Review:

Philippe Cabassac is a 50-something, 200 pound plus "solidly built" linguistics professor, whose specialist subject is the dying Provençal dialect; his lectures are "luminous, captivating, memorable. Those who attended invariably fell under his spell." He lives in a dilapidated farmhouse, the family home for eight or more generations. Even though he lives cheaply, his part-time professor's salary doesn't cover his living expenses and so he sells off a parcel of land each year-- just enough to make ends meet.

Philippe belongs utterly to the Provençal country. He goes "truffling every winter, gathering wild asparagus in the spring, flowering medicinal herbs each summer, and a plethora of pale, speckled mushrooms each fall." He belongs there as utterly as his young, recently dead wife, belonged nowhere. Julieta was the most enigmatic of Philippe's students. A tall, raven-haired and aquiline- nosed orphan, she grasped at the Provençal dialect as if trying to graft her own life onto its genealogy, to forge herself an identity and history.

Their marriage was brief, yet for Philippe, idyllic. We meet him two years after Julieta's death, just as he's admitting to himself that those vivid, lucid dreams of Julieta come to him during the night after he's eaten one of the black truffles that he hunts down at first religiously, then, hungry for those dreams that reunite him with his dead wife, fanatically, and to the exclusion of all else.

This is a lyrical, poetic novel (the author is a poet) that packs all of life and death and decay into its 150 intense pages. --Lisa Gee

Review:

[O]ne of those rare, haunting novels that you consume in a single sitting.--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (02/07/2000)

Imbibe this lush, luminous book as if it were a drug.--Albert Mobilio

[A]n erotic, telluric novel suffused on every page with the fragrances of truffles, almonds peaches, earth, and sex.--Eliot Weinberger

[T]he experience it gives a reader is long and intense.--Michael Ignatieff

[M]akes you want to catch the first plane to the south of France and head for the nearest oak forest.

An oddly gentle, wintry little novel, with a gorgeous primeval landscape.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0393321797
• ISBN 13: 9780393321791
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160