Book: My Italian Bulldozer by Alexander McCall Smith

The second of my chance finds on the sale shelf, the story is as odd as the title suggests and as intriguing as it sounds.

After I’d read it, I saw someone (Esil, Goodreads) describe it as a ‘palate cleanser,’ which is how I’m going to refer to all future comfortable reads that I pick up after a heavy read.

Do all novelists write about writers at some point? This one is about food writer Paul, who is dispatched to Italy by his editor, Gloria, to finish a manuscript after his girlfriend has left him. She booked him into his favourite hotel and made all the travel arrangements to get him refocused on the deadline.

The bulldozer comes in as a main character when there is a mix-up at the car rental company, which rather surprisingly leads to prison until favours are called in. The bulldozer is the only vehicle available to him to reach his small hill town in Tuscany.

It’s the cast of characters that brings the story alive, as Paul Stuart doesn’t come across as particularly interesting for a well-travelled food writer. However, the people he knows or has befriended along the way portray him differently, and they are very much worth spending time with, except for his ex. I was most intrigued by the powerful man he sat next to on the plane and Tonio, a fantastic cook and winemaker based just outside the border of a famous wine region, which I learned is real: Brunello di Montalcino.

Reading this certainly gives me an appetite not only for food but for wine and for going back to Italy.

The author, as I now find, is prolific with many book series under his belt. I picked this one up because ‘Edinburgh’ is mentioned in the synopsis, and that is where I was heading in the coming week.