The Fly-Truffler: A Novel - Hardcover

Sobin, Gustaf

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393048322 ISBN 13: 9780393048322

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2000

Synopsis

Philippe Cabassac has fly-truffled every winter since childhood on his family estate in Provence. Stalking the flies that lay their eggs over the odoriferous truffles, he has become a master in this subtle art. With the death of his young wife, Julieta, however, his hunt takes on a new urgency: he discovers that the pungent tubers bring him a series of dreams where his lost wife is restored to him in intimate, prolonged communion. Memory and dream braid together into a magical narrative, and Cabassac's seductive epiphanies overwhelm his waking life as he desperately pursues their promise of redemption and revelation.

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Reviews

Sobin--a poet, novelist (Venus Blue) and longtime resident of Provence--breathlessly evokes the dying language and haunting beauty of that bucolic French province in his shimmering novel. Philippe Cabassac, a dedicated Provencal and professor of the nearly extinct language, is the gloomy middle-aged protagonist of this tale of obsessive desire. He fly-truffles every winter, hunting the wooded hills of his ancestral farmland for truffles by marking the location where the flies, those "golden keys," lay their eggs. Grieving over the untimely death two years before of his beloved wife, Julieta (she was a young student in his class), Cabassac has made the gradual and thrilling discovery that the ingestion of truffles creates a state of receptivity to nightly visitations by her. With each successive, sensuous dream, Cabassac comes closer to discovering the secret Julieta needs to impart. Obsessed with unearthing that odoriferous tuber, "the agent of epiphanous visions," Cabassac invites his dreams to consume his real life and he all but signs away his patrimony--his land and the ramshackle farmhouse where he grew up and only he and his aged aunt are left to inhabit. Sobin's prose is dense and aromatic, his descriptions gorgeously verging on the purple. Through flashbacks, Cabassac recalls the meeting and courtship of the strangely passive object of desire, Julieta, whose "amorphous immensities" the linguistics professor longs to fill "with every articulated cell of his being." Through a series of dazzling associations, she comes to embody the spirit of the land Cabassac adores: the "wild, resinous stands of pinewood," "salted meats hanging from rafters," "chaff flying like sparks in a high wind" and on and on. Sobin is deeply in his element, borrowing gothic strains from Edgar Allan Poe, and the more carried away he becomes, the more deliriously rich the reader's feast. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Poet and novelist Sobin (Venus Blue, 1992) offers up a strange and serious love-tale imbued by the surrealwith results hardly less compelling for that. Professor (at the University of Avignon) of the rapidly dying Provenal language, the methodical Cabassac finds his life changed from the day he takes home with him the beautiful Julieta, whom he first notices as she sits alone in the back row of his lecture auditorium. Julieta shares Cabassac's passion for capturing the last oral records of Provenal, and the pairnow living together, though at first sexlessly, in Cabassac's ancient and enormous farmhousemake weekend trips to remote areas of Haute Provene, speaking there with old men and women in order to capture what Cabassac calls ``breath relics'' of the dying language. One weekend, by a waterfall, they do make love, and from then on all is changedfirst by Julieta's pregnancy, and then, before she delivers, by her death. Exactly how the crushed Cabassac will cope with his now-emptied life had best be left for readers to discover, though it does need to be said that only after making meals of the deeply buried, mysterious, and curiously atavistic truffles that he searches for on the ancient acres of his estateonly then is he able to dream of Julieta in ways even more rewardingly vivid than life. His contemporary life, indeed, is gradually left behind as Cabassac searches for his truffles, neglects his teaching, sells off bits of his estate (and then, disastrously, the whole thing), goes without electricity, then telephone, as he descends more and more deeplysymbolically? really?into the lost antiquity that it seems now Julieta (an orphan) might herself in fact have arisen from. Not for literalists, but a symbolic-emotional tale that immerses the reader into the very air, feel, and texture of ancient Proveneand as a bonus serves up a fascinating handbook on the life and harvesting of the enigmatic truffle. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sobin tells the story of a love that survives even death. When Julieta, the adored wife of Philippe Cabassac, dies, there is a void in Cabassac's life. He soon realizes that nothing matters to him anymore--not his distinguished career as a scholar and professor of Provencal linguistics or the upkeep of his family estate. But he discovers that dining on truffles (a specialty of Provence) causes him to have intense dreams about Julieta, which continue in a logical sequence as if a serial were unfolding from one night to the next. Although each winter, Cabassac, like his fellow Provencal countrymen, has stalked the flies that lay their eggs directly over the truffles, he now devotes his life to fly truffling in an attempt to spend more dreamtime with Julieta. Gradually, as Cabassac's dreams become more real to him than his waking hours, he loses his home, career, and mind. An appropriate novel for large collections of literary fiction, but it is unlikely to have wide appeal, as the lyrical style distances readers from the experiences of the characters. Nancy Pearl

Sobin, a poet and novelist (Venus Blue) who has lived in Provence for 35 years, captures the region's stark beauty and fading traditions in this haunting and elegantly written love story. The book opens on Philippe Cabassac, a middle-aged professor of Provencal linguistics, fly-truffling -hunting the flies that lay their eggs directly over the truffles-on his rundown family estate. Although a traditon since childhood, the act holds new meaning for the grieving widower. "Never before had the fly been considered a 'golden key' and the truffle...an agent of epiphanous visions." By consuming the truffle in an omlet, Cabassac has discovered it has affected his dreams, "bringing him, each time, closer and closer to the bereaved figure of his wife, Julietta" who has "something wonderful, perfectly marvelous" to sell him. Increasingly obsessed with his dream world, Cabassac gradually loses his grip on his job, his estate, and, in an incandescent conclusion, his waking life. A magical, lovely novel, highly recommended for all literary collections.
Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393048322
• ISBN 13: 9780393048322
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 155