In 2006, Wilberforce is an alcoholic close to killing himself through his prolific wine consumption of four or five bottles a day. Regularly barred from the high-end restaurants he visits in search of the most exclusive and expensive vintages, Wilberforce does not appreciate that he is addicted; he views himself as a wine connoisseur, even when he wakes up in hospital from an alcohol-induced coma. From this engaging beginning, Paul Torday takes the reader back to three previous years of Wilberforce's life, in which we see the journey that transformed him from a young, successful businessman to a walking disaster area.
There are some darkly humorous moments in the novel, but for the most part, this is downbeat stuff. Whilst it is highly readable, a few things in the book don't quite convince; for example, the voice of Wilberforce as a man in his mid- to late thirties - even allowing for his decline and world-weariness, it's difficult to believe in the age Torday has given him. The fact that Wilberforce has a mystery family background and parentage, and that his first name is kept secret for much of the book, are curious asides that do little to add any sense of suspense or intrigue to what is essentially a tale of a messed-up life.
There are other problems. We don't get to know the Catherine character at all (although perhaps this is deliberate; she does not seem to have left an impression on Wilberforce as a truly real person, either). In addition, the book's opening chapters, in which Wilberforce gets inebriated on £3,000-a-bottle Pétrus before being forcibly ejected from his latest choice of eatery, and tries to find a way to obtain wine despite the attentions of a nurse hired in an effort to prevent him doing any more damage to himself, are significantly more entertaining than the couple of hundred pages that follow.
However, I thoroughly enjoyed this. The hints we are given of Wilberforce's mistakes and misapprehensions (and not just regarding his alcoholism) mean that there is a somewhat twisted pleasure to be had out of knowing more than the protagonist does. It is true that there is little plot to speak of, and that in telling the story backwards, Torday loses the book's early riotous momentum, as we spend time with a Wilberforce who is ever more sensible and considered in his behaviour. This was nonetheless, a fun read for me and on that basis it gets four stars, though I could probably pick some more holes in it if I wanted to.
It is Torday's characterisation of Ed Simmonds, a.k.a. Ed Hartlepool (Hartlepool being the title he will inherit) that is Torday's most believable creation in this novel. We don't see much of him, but Ed feels real; he lives and breathes a casually easy existence, something that eludes Wilberforce to the end - or rather, has eluded him from the beginning.
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