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Intoxicated: A Novel of Money, Madness, and the Invention of the World's Favorite Soft...
by John Barlow
Available from Amazon
$18.96
|
Features
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: William Morrow February 7, 2006
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060591765
ISBN-13: 978-0060591762
Product Dimensions:
9.1 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Part fable and part vaudeville, this history of the fictional Rhubarilla, "one of the most popular carbonated soft drinks in the world," begins in 1860s England, when Rodrigo Vermilion, a flamboyant hunchback midget, meets businessman Isaac Brookes on a train bound for Yorkshire. An entrepreneur, storyteller and huckster, Rodrigo seizes on the recent trend toward temperance and convinces Isaac, who is rich, to invest in a nonalcoholic pick-me-up elixir with an "un-put-your-finger-uponable" taste. When they hit upon the magic combination of rhubarb and coca leaf, Rhubarilla is born, with the name courtesy of Isaac's 16-year-old son, George. At the same time, Isaac's beloved wife, Sarah, is dying, and his other son Tom believes Rodrigo a fraud. Violent breakdowns and recriminations push the venture—and the family—to the edge of ruin, but forgiveness, persistence and an aggressive advertising campaign put Rhubarilla on the way to its destiny. The novel is less about the soft-drink industry than the Brookes clan itself; unfortunately, the Brookeses prove engaging but not remarkable, and Rodrigo is colorful but hardly unforgettable. What is remarkable is Barlow's attention to period detail, a potent Victorian cocktail of repressed sexuality and simmering violence, but the secret formula that would make it work is missing. (Feb. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Five years after Eating Mammals, John Barlow is back with another gastronomical story that's as surprising, funny and satisfying as a good belch. The British writer is something of a master at concocting what could be called "sentimental grotesques," and Intoxicated, a novel about the development of an improbable soft drink made from rhubarb, delivers a strange but irresistible mix of flavors. We meet young George Brookes in 1863 when he's whirling around upside down, vomiting. His mother, Sarah, has discovered him eating rhubarb leaves in the yard and is determined to spin the poison out of his little body. George survives, of course (rhubarb leaves aren't all that toxic), but over the next topsy-turvy decade, that scene congeals into a family legend that captures the blend of disorientation, despair and hilarity that enters their lives during the course of this novel. Sarah's husband, Isaac, is a shrewd businessman of "confounded eccentricity" who has finally noticed the general disarray at home. He decides to sell off his lucrative wool factory in France and settle down with his wife and sons in Leeds, England, for good. But his retirement lasts only about 15 minutes before he accidentally saves the life of a flamboyant midget named Roderick Vermilion, who convinces him to pour his fortune into the development of a nonalcoholic drink to satisfy the growing temperance movement. (The air is already bubbling with rumors about carbonated beverages in America.) Even before his family has perfected a secret recipe in the kitchen, Isaac has set up a manufacturing system and built a rhubarb cartel that promises supplies and profits year-round. His long-suffering wife never really expected him to settle down anyway; she's just grateful that this crazy scheme keeps everyone's mind off her impending death. Under Vermilion's gassy encouragement, young George discovers he has a knack for writing advertising jingles, despite his severe dyslexia, and for the first time he dares to think of himself as something besides a kindly simpleton. Only the elder son, Tom, resists these plans, realizing his days of drinking and whoring away Dad's fortune are threatened by the fast-talking midget who dresses like a leprechaun. While their madcap plans ferment, Barlow adds a number of serious and even tragic ingredients. It's almost not fair how much he makes us care for these silly, vulnerable people. The marriage of Sarah and Isaac spans the poles of devotion and negligence that only two people deeply in love can understand -- or forgive. And poor George can't possibly mature until he suffers the shattering realization that his older brother is a brutal, selfish man. In a sense, Barlow has stirred up a batch of fiction that's not unlike the strange drink Vermilion devises: "When anyone sampled Rhubarilla," the narrator writes, "its mystery got them immediately, and they fell like enchanted infants under the spell of its strange, unknowable taste. From the very first sip it inveigled its way through their gums, down into the roots of their teeth. Of course, they would tell themselves, it does seem to taste like rhubarb, but what is it that tingling-sweetness, sour-and-sugary, damn it, what's the word? Not rhubarb, no, no ! It's it's. I know it right on the tip of my tongue. That was the key to it. That was how Rhubarilla got you, insidiously, but innocently. Liquid hypnotism." Before you know it, under Barlow's spell and the scent of boiling sugar and mashed rhubarb, you're settling down 130 years later to consider the mixture of hype and hope that still drives consumer marketing, sells over-the-counter medicines and makes us reach reflexively for cold, brown liquids in aluminum cans. A few minutes of listening to Vermilion promise "a draft of happiness" in every bottle are enough to excite anyone's skepticism, but Intoxication delivers the goods. It's the real thing. Ron Charles is a senior editor of Book World. Reviewed by Ron Charles
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
Reader Reviews
INTOXICATED is one of those books, when you open it and start reading, you don't want to put it down. From its evocative opening pages, the reader is drawn into a story of overindulgence and experimentation set against the backdrop of a backend-of-nowhere setting - Gomersal. Having grown up in "The Rhubard Triangle" of West Yorkshire , it wasn't hard for me to be transported half way across the world, to a village setting which probably has changed little since the mid-nineteenth century, to a family of alcoholics and their co-dependents whose actions and reactions are also constant through the ages. Barlow's pages reek of authenticity. But, don't get me wrong, INTOXICATED is far from a torrid story. Like the secret recipe which is added to the Rhurbarb drink, the cast of colourful characters spike the mixture and titillate the imagination. Take Vermilion - the personification of the music hall midget - colourful by name and nature, and the weakling George who slowly emerges like the proverbial butterfly, Isaac Brookes - entrepreneur - seemingly unstoppable, and the rest of the cast of contrasting hangers-on who are unwittingly carried along in the tide of reverie. INTOXICATED captures the reader's imagination with its drama and pathos and Barlow portrays its characters with honesty and sensitivity. INTOXICATED is a great read and I can thoroughly recommend it.
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Intoxicated: A Novel of Money, Madness, and the Invention of the World's Favorite Soft...
by John Barlow
Available from Amazon
$18.96
|
|
