"A Good Year" by Peter Mayle

Boychik Lit Book Review - No. 17

As we think back over the pleasures and pain of the past year, here’s my review of A Good Year by Peter Mayle.
A bored, urbane London career man inherits a rundown vineyard in the Bordeaux region of France. Fortunately, he speaks fluent French and doesn't act so English as to be spurned by the locals. His predictable romantic adventures with bucolic hotties are not graphic at all, but the descriptions of his meals at the local bistro border on the pornographic. If reading about artfully prepared food and incredible wines get you excited, this is your book.
The wine, of course, is a topic of infinite variety. I’m familiar with rhapsodic descriptions including tastes of chocolate, berry, and oak, but this is the first time I saw "dirty socks" mentioned in connection with the taste of wine.
There's a bit of a crime story here, nothing so stressful as to inspire a Hollywood blockbuster. Unanswered questions about the history and lore of this French farming community may pique your interest, like an appetizer course, or what the French call an amuse bouche, a tasty morsel to tease the mouth.
The mystery is not much of a crime. The most violent act involves spitting into a crachoir (a spittoon for wine tasters), which as the Brits might say is a bloody shame, especially if the wine contains just the right hint of dirty sock.
But if in the midst of winter, you’re tempted to escape to the south of France, reading The Good Year is a quick and inexpensive vacation.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. As a holiday gift to my readers, LaPuerta Books has released all three of The Rollo Hemphill Misadventures in one Kindle ebook for just 99 cents. These are the wacky stories of a young man failing upward in a series of three novels: My Inflatable Friend, Rubber Babes, and Farnsworth’s Revenge. Young men will identify, mature men will sympathize, and women of any age will delight in seeing poor Rollo go splat. That’s The Misadventures of Rollo Hemphill on Amazon Kindle. It’s priced at less than a buck for a limited time. You can catch these podcasts on Boychik Lit.com.

In which I prove I am not a minion of Satan

Image credit: Jeremiah Lambert

 Okay, that's a pretty heavy opener, I admit. I should start by explaining that I am not a fire-breathing practitioner of any particular philosophy. I don't have an agenda other than to perhaps make you curious enough to read the Rollo Hemphill series of comic novels.
But I have some objective proof, I think, that I'm not working for the Dark Side.
There are two - precisely two - times in my adult life when I have been violently ill from drinking alcohol. I don't mean upset or hung over. I'm talking protracted retching. Sorry for the image, but read on, it's a fact in evidence. And I don't mean my initiations to drinking - yes, I was a frat guy back in the day and found out rapidly and in the presence of an embarrassed date that you don't consume a mixture of types of alcohol at the same party.
No, the times I was very sick had to do with one specific type of drink, and I was no longer a youngster. When I worked in Detroit, I had a boss, a "silver-tongued devil," and one of my responsibilities as VP to his CEO was to buy him lunch almost daily. And we had drinks before lunch, wine with lunch, and postprandial brandies. We even got in trouble once with the bartender for pouring cognac in a spoon with a sugar cube, lighting it, and promptly dunking the flaming thing in our creamed coffees. (It's called a Cafe Royale, and totally against the fire code in any restaurant or public place.)
I know this story is rambling, but I'm getting there. Mr. Silver's favorite drink was a Perfect Manhattan. I think he liked ordering it so he could ask for a Perfect Man, which is indeed what he imagined he was. A shot of bourbon, a splash of sweet vermouth, and splash of dry vermouth, and a twist of lemon - on the rocks in an Old Fashioned glass. Now, if you're feeling adventurous, skip the lemon peel and plop in one or two anchovy olives. Sweet and sour!
Okay, this is a drink to pop the lid off your brain.
Both times I was violently sick it was from sucking down the Perfect Man. But not every time.
I have since figured it out.
Some vermouths, not all, contain the plant extract wormwood. Those brands are, I understand, European.
Wormwood is toxic to the righteous. Look it up.

Gerald Reads at Vroman's Bookstore on Sunday June 12 at 3pm

Author of the Rollo Hemphill comic misadventure novels Gerald Everett Jones will read from the forthcoming third book in the series Farnsworth's Revenge: Rollo's End. It's the sequel to My Inflatable Friend and Rubber Babes.

In the first two books, Rollo has masterminded a plot with a life-sized rubber doll made in the image of a famous soap star, Monica LaMonica. Rollo’s former boss, old crusty Hugo Farnsworth, has developed a passionate fascination for the doll. He is currently entertaining “her” as his sole guest aboard his private yacht Shameless Palms, currently anchored at St. Tropez. Meanwhile, Rollo has also fled to France to avoid being arrested for a money-laundering scam he didn’t do. As the book opens, Farnsworth secretly summons Rollo and pleads for his help because the doll has mysteriously disappeared from the boat.

Vroman's Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA

3 - 5pm, Sunday, June 12, 2011

Sponsored by the Independent Writers of Southern California "IWOSC Reads Its Own" series