2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Have you ever had that absolute sense of conviction that, after all, life is going to turn out really well for you?", December 22, 2008
This review is from: Bordeaux (Hardcover)
Have you seen the film
Memento?
Bordeaux (published earlier in Britain as
The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce: A Novel in Four Vintages) doesn't revolve around someone afflicted with short-term memory loss, but it does employ a reverse storytelling technique and isn't jolly. Life sucked for Leonard in the movie; and despite his cheeriness about feeling life will turn out well, Wilberforce, the novel's off-kilter narrator, displays the depths of his own "loserness" upfront in act or "vintage" number one.
Paul Torday's second novel -- his first was, of course, the charmingly quirky
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen -- kicks off in 2006 and works back, in four "vintages," to 2002. Basically, Wilberforce (in normal chronology) degenerates from a socially challenged workaholic software company owner who avoids alcohol to a man drinking himself to death on multiple bottles of select but questionable vintage a day. He accomplishes this in those few years by finding his way to Francis Black's not exactly prospering wine shop, Caerlyon Hall, one evening after work. Gradually he becomes a regular there and even acquires a few other friends, including a woman, Catherine, he gradually desires to marry, and a man who stands in his way. Under Francis' tutelage, Wilberforce becomes a wine connoisseur of sorts, and then Francis, an older man in poor health, prevails upon Wilberforce to take on responsibility for his considerable, debt-ridden wine cellar when the time comes. Why would Wilberforce take on such a life-altering commitment? Therein lies the crux of the matter....
Torday scored winningly with his satire,
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Alfred, luckless sod he was in many ways, grew in awareness and love during his incredible adventure. Wilberforce, however, is no Alfred. He -- and I give nothing away that isn't made plain in the first section of the book -- is a doomed man.
Bordeaux deals with themes of inevitability: Is our genetic inheritance insurmountable? Are we but the puppets of fate? Both Alfred and Wilberforce are diffident, socially handicapped men, but Torday doesn't stuff Alfred into a funnel that leads only to the refuse pile; Wilberforce he does.
Reading this novel could appear a thankless endeavor at times: why bother with a story being told so that each revelation unfolds before its underpinnings? But, as in the acclaimed
Memento, Torday's exercise in backward story structure pays off. His character study feeds the curiosity about how and why Wilberforce reaches each stage of his undoing. Torday, in effect, puts the rind peels back on the orange, until on the last page Wilberforce is a man who can say in optimistic sincerity that he thinks life will turn out well for him.
Still,
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen was the more enjoyable book of the two. Torday's third novel,
The Girl on the Landing, is expected in early 2009. I await it with cautious eagerness, hoping for continued ingeniousness and less morbidity than displayed in
Bordeaux.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Write-off, March 16, 2009
This review is from: Bordeaux (Hardcover)
To be honest, I'm utterly disappointed by this book. According to many reviews I read before I started to read this book, I had been expecting great novel about wine, about passion, about degustation and about love (well, in some way). In fact, you get extremely ordinary story about a bloke who felt for his newly found desire - wine. But there is almost no description of the process of degustation and about growing of vine. It's not a book for wine lovers.
What's more, the story is not narrated gradually, but from the end till the beginning. In same cases it could be useful (e.g. in Memento movie), but certainly not here. You start with reading of the end of a drunkard and finish with bloody boring description of finding of a new lifestyle. Don't hesitate not to buy and read it.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Very funny and very sad, September 27, 2011
This review is from: Bordeaux (Hardcover)
This book was very thoughtprovoking and entertaining at the same time. The description of a man dying of Wernicke Korsakoff alcoholic psychosis was fascinating. The structure of the novel, where you know what happens because it is told backwards, creates a tension and sadness instead of a spoiler. You at times feel very sad for Wilberforce and at other times you are repulsed by him. It's very much like people in real life. I am a very picky reader and I LOVED this book, couldn't put it down.
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