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[Nancy Pearl] Hello and welcome to Book Lust.
I'm Nancy Pearl.
My guest today is Kira Jane Buxton whose new book, new novel,
“Tartufo,” is set in a small Italian town.
Kira, thank you so much for being on the show today.
- Oh my goodness.
It's absolutely my pleasure.
I've really been looking forward to this. We had such a good time
chatting last time. So... -Yes.
-Yeah. Thrilled to see you.
- So, so here's the experience I had when I read the first
the first chapter of the book.
And here's the cover. It's just wonderful.
Of course you know what the cover is, but I wanted to show the watching people.
- I’m very lucky, yeah, it’s a beautiful cover.
- The the picture of a Tuscan village.
So the main.
So the first chapter is from the point of view of a dog,
which I love.
I mean, I just think that
when a dog is narrating a book and there have been several.
Paul Auster wrote a novel with the dog narrating the book.
And the dog is Aria.
I'm I'm just fall into the book with just great pleasure.
And then when I started, you know,
the actual reading of the chapter, Kira, I felt like I was...
I felt like your words were, like, filling me up.
I mean, it was like eating those words.
Isn't that.
I mean, has I never had that experience before?
I might have had the experience of like, oh my gosh, this language is so beautiful
and things like that.
But this was a really physical experience.
Like,
I got, you know, not drunk on words.
But anyway, I loved it.
What a wonderful way to start the book is, I guess what I'm saying.
- Yes. Thank you for saying that.
That's I'm going to keep that in my pocket for eternity.
That's so lovely.
I'm a big fan of euphonious language,
and I love to read a book and be, sort of as you say, sort of get
fed by the language, to be filled up. To feel it in your soul.
-Right.
-Yeah.
To savor a sentence like a piece of chocolate.
That’s one of my favorite things.
And so once I decided
to write about truffles, I thought kind of ineluctably
the language would have to be about scent and it would have to be sensuous.
And it would have to be
rich and sort of had its own little siren song.
So I, you know, that was my very lofty goal for it to.
So to hear you say that, it's I mean my goodness, thank you.
[ laughter ]
- Your your first two books were
were humorous and in fact, the first one,
“Hollow Kingdom,” was a finalist for a humor award, the Thurber Prize.
Right? -Yeah.
-And this one, certainly there's humor in this one.
But it's a different type of humor.
Could you...do you agree?
And could you talk about that?
- I do agree, I think, you know, I have these moments
where I think, now is the time I'm going to write a serious novel
and there will be no humor in it.
But I think all my funny bones are funny bones.
You know, I really, I find humor such a wonderful,
kind of fun conduit to tell a story.
And a way for the reader.
You know, once you make somebody laugh, you really open them up to experience
emotion, other emotion
in a really sort of profound way.
Or at least that's been my experience
when I read humor. I'm very drawn to it.
And I think with “Hollow Kingdom,”
you know, so much of the humor comes from the premise.
You know, it's a, it's a crow narrating the book. I call him my crow-tagonist.
[ laughter ] [ mumbled words ]
Which is, sort of the profane name.
That's just the shortened version of his name.
And, you know, he's he's talking about the end of humanity.
And in order to tell that story, I had to have this sort
of humorous lens, a sort of bird's eye view of the situation....
- As it were.
A bird's eye view, as it were.
- Yes, as it were.
Otherwise it would have been a very different novel, a very bleak and dark novel.
So, for me, that's where most of the humor comes from.
It’s that sort of miss calibration of a crow.
You know, who loves our species, who thinks everything we do is marvelous.
Who thinks the pinnacle of our, you know, sort of legacy is the Cheeto.
You know, he loves Cheetos and junk food. So there was so much fun to be had writing S.T.
For "Tartufo,” a lot of the humor is more from
the chaos, the the truffle that's found,
you know, it's sort of this, you know, huge, stinky,
great sort of
treasure that's found that sets every it just sets chaos into motion
and it affects everything that it comes into contact with,
which is kind of how a truffle works.
You know, they release theremones
And that's what is attractive to pretty much all, all animals.
-Right.
-Everything wants to eat a truffle from a worm to the bore or, you know, it's. So
yeah, a lot of the humor is different.
It's less spicy.
I think than my first two novels.
There’s less salty language.
Which, you know, came from the crow.
If you know crows,
it makes sense the language.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
What gave you the the idea for this book?
What was the impetus?
- Mmmm, well,
you know, I grew up,
I had a really great childhood, really fascinating, interesting childhood.
I grew up in different, a lot of different places: Dubai
and the UAE, and Jakarta, Indonesia, Ulsan in Korea, Singapore,
Texas, lots of different places.
And, but part of this, I guess when I was quite young,
my sister and I went up to my mom and sort of said, “We don't have any roots.”
You know, we
we felt culturally kind of conflicted and wanted that feeling of roots.
And my mom, this was in the ‘90s, like about ’94 and ‘95.
She been editing a magazine article, an expat magazine.
And there was a woman who had written a, an article about also having
this expat eperience, but finding her roots in this tiny Italian village.
A little village in Tuscany.
So my mom befriended her.
And this is, you know, 30-plus years ago, and off we went out to Tuscany
and we went looking at houses and very unimaginatively fell in love with one.
And it's this, you know, gorgeous little farmhouse,
ancient with a pizza oven and then a barn, and it's just beautiful.
And so my parents said, “Let's do it.”
“Let's, let's do it! Buy it!”
And the real estate
agent in Italy said, “Well, okay, well you'll need to get a cash deposit.”
So off they went to the bank and they got a deposit for the house, and
it was given to them and the most money they’d ever held
physically in a brown paper bag.
And then they were told to stand in a random
bucolic area and just wait.
And so they're standing there with this bag of lira, and, and my mom,
I think at the time was thinking like, “Uh, is this is a bit like a drug deal, isn’t darling?”
And, and this Mercedes came down the hill
and this very elegant woman pops out of the car.
She's wearing this beautiful fur coat.
She's got these gorgeous earrings.
And, you know, to hear my mom describe is just.
“She's so glamorous. Darling, you should have seen her boots.”
And I said, “She sounds like Cruella di Vil.”
She's like, “Yes darling, she did look a bit like Cruella di Vil.”
So they hand over this money, and the women just drove off.
And at the time, my parents didn't speak Italian.
So there was just a lot of, you know, a lot of “grazi, prego” back and forth.
And then she drove off with the money and my parents were
looking at each other, going, “Did we just buy a house?”
“Or did we get robbed?”
But they did, they bought a house.
That was it. That was the process.
And then it was this, you know, it's been 30 years
of having this place, in Italy
and all the wonderful experiences
with the people that live there and,
making friends and making pizza in a 100-year-old pizza oven and watching
fireflies strobe across the hill while you’re drinking a glass of prosecco
and, you know, and then, you know, crazy stuff. Like my dad
at one point was trying to plant a garden and something
kept eating his vegetables.
Anything he planted would be all dug up, you know, the next day.
And it turned out it was the cinghiale, the wild boar.
And so he was just basically feeding them for quite a long time.
[ laughter ]
So, yeah, a lot of them, you know, I didn't,
it's not the exact village that we live
in, but it's, certainly inspired by,
and, a love, a love letter of, certainly a paean, an homage to
one by what I think is one of the most beautiful places on earth.
- Have you ever read the book or seen the film “Enchanted April”
-No.. -By Elizabeth von Arnim?
I think you would really love that book.
It was written probably in early in the 20th
century, middle of the 20th century, maybe.
And it's about three women, three very different women from London
who decide, almost on the spur of the moment, to to go in together
and rent a palazzo in Tuscany
and, and, and what happens to them.
It's just a delight.
It is available as a film.
It's a wonderful audio book as, but just to read it is a joy.
So take a look at “Enchanted April.”
- It's going right to the top of my TBR.
- Okay.
Then you'll have to email me and tell me.
Tell me what you think.
-So do you fall in love with your characters when you're writing?
- I do, I do because and
usually the more flawed they are, or quirkier they are,
the more I love them.
Yeah, in my first book,
when I, when I started writing “Hollow Kingdom,”
I had the idea that I would write from the perspective of a crow,
but I thought it was going to be a sort of really sweet
and loving relationship between a crow and a little boy.
And I had planned for it to be,
you know, quite lovely this first chapter and the crow would be very erudite
and I got started writing it.
And then there was salty language flying.
And this character, Big Jim, burst onto the page, and I,
I didn't like him at all.
And so I'm going to have to off him immediately.
But the more I wrote about him, the more I loved him,
because he is a very deeply flawed character with a very different ideology
than I have about certain things.
But I really loved his heart.
You know, he's a real, animal lover
who had very difficult choices to make in the course of the novel.
And so with “Tartufo” I think similarly, I did
I didn't dislike anybody off the bat.
There's one character, Duccio, who is, he's
described as a wet weekend of a man, and he's fairly,
he's fairly, you know, a bit of a, an Eeyore of a character, you know.
But I also I really like him as well.
Like, I really sort of grew to love him.
The more you kind of understand the choices the character has made
and what they've been through and how they've coped.
Yeah.
It's, it's so much fun unlocking the mysteries of who a character is, I think.
- Yeah, yeah, I agree, and
and when the author feels that way, then I think the reader feels that way, too.
I mean, I, you know, I'm convinced that that attitude of the author
comes across to the reader.
- I absolutely agree with that.
I think, yeah, I always think of a book as a distillation of energy.
And so you're really tapping into what the author has, you know,
you know, shared or, you know, intended with their energy.
And so, yeah, I completely agree with that.
- That's interesting because you open a book and the energy can flow from it
to you as the reader.
Oh, that that's that's a nice a nice metaphor for that. Wow.
- One wonderful thing that happens
when it stays with you and it settles into your cells,
a story you've read.
Yeah. Yeah.
Kind of a little bit of magic, I think. Yeah.
- So do you outline for your books?
I mean, did you know at the beginning of “Tartufo” exactly what was going to happen?
So you had like an arrow that you know, was going that way?
- I'm a little bit of a middle of the road in terms of, you know...
Writers, we talk about, plotters and pantsers. Pantsers, being,
you know, fly by the seat of your pants and plotters being, you know,
the people who plot everything right down to the, you know, sentences.
I'm in the middle.
I, I have to have some idea of where I'm going, some some basic,
you know, signposts along the way that I can say, okay, I know
that this happens at somewhere about this point in the book.
But I don't exactly know, you know,
the absolute every single plot detail.
And that gives me kind of leeway to figure things out.
But generally I'll have a couple of scenes and I call them candy scenes,
and they're the scenes that I've just they play in my head over and over.
And I'm so excited to get to those scenes.
And I know from the start that those are going to happen.
And those I find are, motivational.
They keep you, writing,
and you look forward to them and they're excited and,
and if they're really
if you feel strongly enough about them, they also tend to be a sort of,
a bar
to which the rest of the book has to come come up to.
So that's the way I kind of think of it.
I dangle carrots for myself.
- And and do you
do you write those scenes separately?
So I mean, do you have those, you know, on your computer
as you're writing and you get to that scene, but it's already written.
It's not just in your head.
- No, I taunt myself and I say it
basically use it as a, you know, motivation to write.
So I'll say, okay,
I'll get to write that scene once I've got a third
of the way through the book, because I know it's about the third way mark.
So yeah, it's...I think if I and I and I never say never because I feel like
every book I write, I'm learning to write a novel all over again.
Every book is seems completely different, and I have to be open to the process.
So if I,
I imagine in the future, a time will come when I have to go away
and write the candy scene that's ahead to figure out where
I am at the beginning.
Yeah.
But generally, once I've written the first chapter,
I tend to write that, and I try to get it to a pretty polished level
so that any time I come back to the novel, it's like, okay, this is, you know,
this is what I'm aiming for. This is the feel of this.
I've started the worldbuilding and I've put a character
into some terrible situation.
And where are we going next? Yeah. -Right.
Were there any were there particular issues
for you as a writer that that arose during the writing of “Tartufo”?
You know, something that you didn't expect would be
not a game changer, but,
something that the I don't think this would happen to you,
but something that made you disinclined to sit down and write?
- Yeah, yeah, it's a great question.
There was. I was hugely intimidated by the number of characters.
Yeah.
There's a lot, and I thought, you know, maybe I'm tackling too many.
Is this going to be overwhelming for the reader?
I've never had to do so many scenes where, you know that
these sort of quips and quick interactions are happening between characters,
but the reader also has to remember who each of them are, and,
but I saw it as a good challenge,
and I thought it was sort of necessary because I'm writing about a village,
and I wanted the village represented these, these lovely characters. And,
that I think was the biggest challenge for me.
I think daily I would show up at the page and think, oh, too many.
And I often, sometimes I lose the character, sometimes, you know,
I didn't know where Duccio had gone off to.
So keeping track of everyone.
But it's funny to me that that is less intimidating than writing
from the perspective of the animals, which I often do in my work.
I find that that doesn't intimidate me at all.
I find that to be really sort of freeing and interesting.
I think because our stories are often so anthropocentric, it's kind of, to me,
lovely to open up and imagine what what the be experiences or you know,
what the actual truffle is doing.
And that kind of I find that adds a kind of interesting richness
and a sort of environmental consciousness to what I'm doing.
But it's funny that this was really the first novel
where I thought, oh, I'm writing about a lot of people.
How am I qualified?
Do I know humans well enough?
- You do include a
table of, characters for the
for the reader to, to keep track of.
But yeah, like, I'm not so convinced.
I know people don't like to get lost among the different characters,
but I always find that you have to just go with the flow.
And and if this character shows up here, no doubt they'll show up later
or I'll learn more about them without having to say,
oh, that's the town butcher or whatever, right.
So in the...we don't have a lot of time left, but what..
but what are you reading?
What are you enjoying? - Oh, lovely.
What am I reading? I I'm just in the moment.
I've just started “Ugly Beautiful” by, Alice Feeney,
which I'm really enjoying.
Lovely. Like, pulled into it right away.
So, so great.
I read “Dragonsbane” by Barbara Hambly, which,
was on my radar
radar because I watched a podcast interview
with Brandon Sanderson, and he raved about it.
And the way he described it, it sounded exactly the type of book
I love to read: a fantasy that's really a feminist take.
And I just so. And I it did not disappoint.
And speaking of euphonious language, it was absolutely stunning.
So I loved it.
I read, recently “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey.
-Oh yeah. Yes.
-What did you think?
- I thought it was brilliant.
- Yes, I loved it.
I it made me.
Well, it made me absolutely 100% double down on the:
I do not want to go to space,
but I love that it just was this beautiful,
really elucidated this idea of the
the overview effect that which is, you know,
I think Michael Collins was one of the first astronauts
to experience that, looking down at our planet and realizing,
sort of cognitively recognizing goodness, what a beautiful, beautiful place
and what a fragile, you know, gorgeous planet we live on.
And, you know, then they all those that experienced it felt moved to
to sort of be advocates and protect it, which I, I just think it's beautiful.
And so she did such a beautiful job of. -She did.
Yeah.
- And and can we expect a new novel
sometime in the next couple of years?
- I think I hope, I hope I'm working on a couple of things.
One is funny fantasy, and the other one is so wild, I have absolutely no idea
if it will end up as a novel, but I feel I feel in my gut that it will.
And I'm kind of weirdly superstitious to say what it's about.
- Oh, yeah.
No, no, no need to do that.
Is your who is your first reader?
Who do you trust the most?
- You know, I'm so lucky.
I have, a very long suffering husband who is.
It's not
easy being, the, spouse of a writer, I think.
But he's wonderful.
And everything I write, I I'll read him a chapter, and he will,
you know, listen.
So I read it aloud each chapter as I've written it to him.
And that's wonderful because, yeah, you know, you get a sense
of what the reader is experiencing and where they think it's going next.
And, you know,
you can tell if something's working, especially I write a lot of humor
so I can see where the jokes land and where they don’t.
- Right.
That's what I was thinking would be so important.
- Yes. It's dicey thing to do for a marriage, I must say. But,
it's fantastic.
He, a funny just a quick anecdote about being the spouse of a writer.
We were at the,
the Literary Alliance event for the King County Library System.
And so lucky to be honored there and I was sitting next to another author
and we were busy signing our books, and her husband was also there.
So her husband and my husband struck up a conversation.
And she writes thrillers.
And so, you know, her husband said to mine...
“Do you think it's a little scary and creepy?
Like, you know, my wife has killed so many people,
you know, in this novel she's killed off so many people.”
And my husband turned to this man and without skipping a beat,
he said, “My wife wiped out the human race.”
[ laughter ]
- That's great.
-Love that. -That's great.
Kira, it's been so nice talking to you again. And,
I look forward to
many of our viewers, listeners reading “Tartufo” and
getting the same kind of pleasure that I did out of it.
- Thank you. Nancy, I this went by so quickly.
I honestly, I know chat for so long.
I thank you so much for having me.
It's always such a treat to chat with you.
And, yeah, this is entirely my pleasure.
- Me too. Back at you. Thank you.
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