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96 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pinot envy, February 21, 2005
This review is from: Sideways: A Novel (Paperback)
Miles is an alcoholic and he's a bad role model, or so says an article in the Sunday NY Times today. Thirty-something wine wannabes are packing the Hitching Post and reciting lines from the movie like crazed Rocky Horror Show refugees (especially when it comes to defaming Merlot), according to the Wall Street Journal a few days earlier.. Who would have ever thought wine geekdom could be so hip, so funny, so sexy? Alexander Payne deserves an Academy Award for accomplishing this feat alone, and we'll know next week if he gets it. Among its other nominations, Sideways is also up for best adapted screenplay, and now that I've read the book, it certainly gets my vote in this category.
I'm not sure what was going through my mind when I decided to buy the book after having seen and loved the movie. I guess at worst I thought I could read the stuff specifically about wine and continue sifting through it to see if I could find any false notes (what else would a geek do?) The cheap-looking puke green paperback cover with the unpromising come-on, "The ultimate roadtrip. The last hurrah," certainly didn't compel me.
But my fears were unfounded. The book is miraculously even better than the movie on almost every dimension. The characters are richer, and the story is both funnier and more believable. For starters, Miles is better -looking than Paul Giamatti. Only a truly sideways wine geek could believe for a minute that Virginia Madsen or any other Maya could fall for someone with a puss like that. Maybe the movie should have been titled "Revenge of the Wine Nerds."
The plot of the book roughly parallels the movie, but the details are deliciously different and absolutely repay reading the book. I'm assuming most people who read this review have already seen the movie, so you should be able to relate to the points of departure that follow. I'll do my best to pique your interest without revealing anything that discourages you from reading the book. Miles isn't a teacher; Miles is cute; Maya is a brunette and the Sandra Oh character is a petite blonde named Terra and she doesn't have a daughter; Jack is smarter, richer, and even more charming; Miles and Maya have a scene in a hot tub; Jack's fiancée is a WASP costume designer with a nasty streak, not a saintly ethnic virgin; a memorable character named Brad never makes it into the movie; there is no '61 Cheval Blanc but there is an '82 Latour that isn't consumed alone in a fast food restaurant; Maya seduces Miles with a bottle of '85 La Tache and a Jayer Richebourg he literally laps up (now that's a fantasy that would make any wine geek's cork pop); Jack is disfigured on several occasions but not from a bashing with a motorcycle helmet.
The book opens with a great scene in an LA wine bar/retail store where Miles typically goes for Friday afternoon tastings that often just serve as an excuse to get blasted for $5. There are sharp portraits of the "regulars," exactly the kind of uber-geeks who populate the fringes of the cult of wine. Compared to these nitwits, like the guy who feverishly records all his tasting notes on a laptop, Miles seems relatively normal and well adjusted. This scene presages a lot of what will unfold in the rest of the book, and it's the one element of the plot I most wish had made it into the movie.
If you liked the movie, I wouldn't hesitate to plunge into Sideways with the same abandon that Jack and Miles demonstrate on their weeklong bender. I suspect you'll experience the same thing I did, which is a curious sense of being slightly tipsy throughout as you observe the movie plot you know competing with the denser, more credible, and ultimately more satisfying storyline of the original. In wine-geek land you often hear vineyards described as "plots," so just as two plots that are right next to each other can produce wines with markedly differing "character," so too the movie and the book will vie for your attention and affection. Which you ultimately prefer, well, as the French would say, chacun son gout.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just like a fine wine ..., January 27, 2005
This review is from: Sideways: A Novel (Paperback)
Like most people I saw the movie, then went back and read the book. I loved the movie, but in some ways the book is better. Miles, the main character in the movie, is more lovable in the book. And he's funnier!! In the movie he comes across as a bit of pretentious snob, but in the book his passion for wine is totally believable. Jack, the other main character in the book, is a hoot in the movie, but I find he has more going on in the book. The book is a real complement to the movie, which owes a great deal to the book.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"We were drinking a memory", October 2, 2004
Rex Pickett, in his novel Sideways has probably created two of the most endearingly loveable characters of recent years. Both men are full of petty denials and insecurities about love, sex and life, but their immutable friendship, and their ability to laugh off their respective troubles, makes for a terribly funny, and heartfelt story as we follow their escapades throughout Santa Ynez wine country.
Miles and his best friend Jack Cole decide drive from Los Angeles up to Solvang. Both want to partake of some hedonistic wine tasting before they have to face Jack's wedding to his fiancé, Babs. Miles is a struggling writer in Santa Monica, and he's taking this trip to forget about his failed marriage, his non-payment of rent and the "real world of relationships, jobs, failed hopes and dreams, and the creeping inevitability of his mortality." Miles is quite a knowledgeable wine connoisseur and knows a lot about various wines and grapes and how the wine is made, but he's also chronically depressed, and has a kind of self-loathing combined with a type of panicked despair. Although he has been divorced for two years, he still can't get over his ex-wife, Victoria.
Miles feels a total disconnection from the world as though his thoughts "had become a jigsaw of ill-fitting pieces." He tries to have a good time, but Jack and he have vastly different ideas about how that can be accomplished. Miles wants to relax, play golf, go wine tasting, and "gaze up at comets for fading memories" but all Jack wants to do is bed women. Jack, a handsome, former daytime television star, is full of sexual desperation as he frantically tries to have his "last hurrah" before he's sentenced to a life of marital monogamy.
As Jack is tries to get Miles out of his doldrums, they meet two fun ladies - Maya a waitress at a local Restaurant, and Stephanie, a pourer at one of the wineries. They're both intelligent, free-spirited gals who like to have a good time. Although Miles tries to keep Jack on the straight and narrow, he cannot control his free-spirited friend, and as the plot unfolds, rude awakenings lie in store for both. A week of "male bonding" doesn't turn out like they both thought it would.
The movie version of Sideways will be released later this month, so it will be interesting to see what director Alexander Payne does with this story. At times, the book seems a little contrived, reading like a budding screenplay, rather than a piece of literary fiction, but the sparkling dialogue and the fabulous descriptions of the local wine growing country will keep most readers entertained. Sideways is unquestionably one of the best "buddy" stories to be released in some time. Also, readers don't have to know anything about wines and wine growing to appreciate the detailed wine tasting elements of this story. Mike Leonard October 04.
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