A conspiratorial, character-driven, and fantastically creative tale of high-end liquor and outlandish melodrama.
A satirical yarn traces the roots of a secret society monitoring and fiercely protecting the sanctity of alcoholic beverages.
At the core of Moser’s (T-Bull and the Lost Men, 2013) novel is a determined coalition of do-gooders self-charged with fighting the “unremitting evil in the marketplace of potable alcohol.” Calling itself the Flavor League, the 14-member consortium, founded to “bring justice to the murky, sleazy, down-and-dirty world of wine and spirits,” seeks to right the wrongs committed by wealthy and powerful entities seeking to control alcohol consumption and its social sophistication. The book provides a fictional history of the league’s inception in the 1980s and its development as a progressive entity through the activity of two integral members who met in 1987: San Franciscan wine tasters Margot Sipski and Brewster Hotte, the latter being the group’s divorced, oddball, freelance-writing 14th member. Margot is busy with an escalating career as a wine authority while Brewster, son of a dead vodka magnate, pines for her attention even with a tarnished reputation. The league emerges as a formidable presence in the libation landscape, primarily since operatives use a secret, long-acting powdered weapon called “MLII,” which strips targets of their ability to taste and smell, rendering them useless in the liquor marketplace. Befitting his two eccentric protagonists, Moser’s tone is comical and plucky, moving swiftly through the pair’s adventures. But in the author’s cleverly imaginative, semifuturistic world of spirits being exploited for sheer avarice, banks hiring senior astrologers, and vodka becoming the currency of kings, nefarious business practices are bound to churn. The stakes increase in this unconventional story when Brewster hears of his brother Jock’s new product line marketing things like a watered-down alcoholic beverage aimed at minors and children: “the ones who dream of having a drink.” The league knows Jock’s business is a prime candidate for MLII but hesitates to act. Still, Brewster and Margot employ an aggressive plot to stop Jock’s genetically modified vodka production project as other groups, like Univod, a powerful, politically connected vodka establishment, also come into the league’s cross hairs. Bartenders and sommeliers may particularly get a kick out of the frothy “alcoholic coup” bubbling at the droll novel’s climax; others might enjoy this lightweight entertainment with a stiff drink and an open mind.
A conspiratorial, character-driven, and fantastically creative tale of high-end liquor and outlandish melodrama.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9847941-4-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: Venial Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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