Reading is great fun when you've got something fun to read. The Food Taster by Peter Elbling is one of those novels you'll find yourself reading early and late and you'll be sorry when it's over.

When I finished The Food Taster the other early morning I re-read the jacket flaps, the Foreword, and the author's web site. I wish there was another book like it at hand right now.

The Food Taster is set in the mid 16th century in an imaginary town named Corsoli, supposedly situated in Italy "where the provinces of Tuscany, Umbria and the Marche meet" -- somewhat like the Four Corners of our Southwest, except it's three corners. You know what I mean.

The hero, Ugo DiFonte, narrates the tale and has more adventures than Don Quixote. In the same chapter he will dodge death, avoid a beating, be faced with a troublesome dilemma, fall in love, lose a loved one, and so on. Next chapter there's the plague. Palace intrigue. Double and triple betrayals. It's going to be a great movie one day.

This is not to say the book is in any way disorganized. There's a straight line from beginning to end. I was swept up and swept away by the nervous narrative sweep.

We first meet Ugo DiFonte on the day after his mother dies:

"For years after my mother hanged herself, I wished I had been older or stronger so that I could have stopped her. But since I was only a child who could not even reach her waist I had to watch helplessly until it was over. The day before..." and so on. We're off to a ripping start.

Peter Elbling has written screenplays for film and TV, acted everywhere, been a standup comedian and an improvisational comic. He knows how to entertain. In this first novel he's cynical enough to depict the lower depths of human nature, and loving enough to forgive characters their character flaws.

Early in the story Ugo and his young daughter are facing starvation on their farm. "The ground beneath me trembled. ...a most magnificent stag shot out of the trees, its eyes wild with fear, its black tongue hanging out of its mouth... the next instant the air was filled with bloodthirsty cries and shouts that chilled my heart. I ran back to the hut just as a hundred hounds tore out of the forest, barking and snarling and howling, followed by a huge man on a black horse -- Federico Basillione DiVincelli, Duke of Corsoli."

The next few moments are fast and funny. "Who told you to put your farm in the middle of my hunt?" the Duke shouts, waving his sword at Ugo's neck. One of the hunters comments, "He could be useful. He could take Lucca's place, Your Excellency."

It turns out that Lucca was the Duke's food taster. Food tasters don't last long in Italy, and this will be Ugo's new job. Tasting food for possible poisons is the setup for a book full of humor and danger.

And there are moments like this:

"... Cristoforo served Federico a platter of flaky crusted yellow pastries bursting with cream and sprinkled with sugar... and best of all, pear tarts wrapped in marzipan. My mouth was filled with enough saliva to drown an ox... I raised the tart to my mouth and bit into it.

"O, Saints be praised! ...If you can imagine a warm doughy base crumbling against the sides of your palate, the sugary pulpiness of a soft brown pear lying on your tongue like a satisfied woman, Eden's succulent juices filling up the canals between your teeth, you would not even be close!"

Not all the descriptions in this novel are as sweet. Be prepared for great gobs of bad taste. You'll see the Duke hosting a Royal wedding and having a Royal bowel movement. All of that is in this book. Ah, Renaissance Italy.

The Food Taster will be out soon in a Penguin paperback. Bite into it.

Aired Friday May 16, 2003 at 8:55 am and Sunday May 18, 2003 at 10:55 am

Orders/Information:

The Food Taster by Peter Elbling. Hardcover published by The Permanent Press at $26. ISBN 1579620477.
Penguin paperback (available May 27, 2003), $13. ISBN 0452284341.

Peter Elbling's personal website: http://www.peterelbling.com/

As the author writes, "Of all the servants... the food taster is the bravest of all. What other servant risks his life not once, but two or three times a day just in the service of his work?.. Why then, if there are there guilds for goldsmiths, lawyers, spinners, weavers, bakers and tailors, should there not be a guild for food tasters? ... Of course a food tasters' guild would be smaller, sometimes only one person to a city, but we could still meet, discuss new foods, poisons, antidotes, even assassins.

"Thinking about this helped pass the hours of travel."