Excellent novel about friendship, love, and second chances.

books:

	• Sideways: A Novel Rex Pickett St. Martin's Griffin, 2004 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 93 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Right There with the Movie

After seeing the movie and enjoying it immensely I sort of figured it was irrelevent to read the book. What if I was disappointed? Would my feelings about the film change as well? Finally, I ventured in after a friend said I had to read the book. The book read very quickly. Like the movie it's very likable and entertaining and the pages just turn of their own volition it seems. I think what the book does is that it amplifies on everything in the movie. You sort of see how the book was the true inspiration for the movie -- not just the wine, but the characters, the milieu and all the rest. As with most books the characters are a little more fully developed because the author has an opportunity to spend more time with them in order to provide them with an inner life. The movie benefits from the fact that it can show expressions on the actors' faces and show the world in which they're moving and evoke emotion through music and things that the book can't do. In comparing the two mediums I'd have to say that book and movie complement (and compliment) each other quite well. Miles, the first person narrator, is a novelist who can't get published, but damn if he isn't going to go down fighting (or drinking). In the movie he's given a real job, whereas in the book he seems to be living on fumes -- thus, stealing from his mother, which a lot of readers and fans of the movie objected to -- is a tad more justified. I found in the novel that Miles is funnier and more self-deprecating about his lot in life, whereas Miles in the movie is a little more down-at-the-mouth and depressed about it all, but they both work off of the same sense of lack of self-fulfillment and the failure of their dreams and aspirations. In the film, Miles's sidekick Jack is a bit of a boob. As played by Thomas Haden Church he's not without some sense of self-awareness or feeling for his friend Miles, but in the book he's a more sentient and more intelligent creatures, even if all the bad things he does in the movie are right there in the book. For some reason he does a better job of justifying them in the book. Plus, in the book -- and this is a big difference between book and movie -- the two of them are drinking quite heavily. Their drinking informs much of their behavior. We don't get the sense that they would act the way they do if they weren't imbibing so much. In the movie, they're drinking most of the time, but there isn't much mention of it, and we never really see them with hangovers -- beautifully depicted in the book -- and straightening up at wine tasting rooms the next day. In the movie, Maya, as lovingly portrayed by Virginia Madsen, is a more complex character, more flawed. In the movie, though a waitress, she's a bit of a male wine geek's fantasy, which is fine. But in the book she does some things that maybe one who's only seen the movie would be a little taken aback by. She's still a small-town fantasy female whom everyone drools over, and she loves wine -- which trait carried over to the movie -- but I found her portrayal in the book more fully 3-dimensional. The one thing the book definitely improves on is the character of Stephanie. In the book her name is Terra and she doesn't ride a Harley and she's not Asian-American. Why in God's name they decided to give her an interracial kid and a white-trash stepmom is beyond me. Fortunatley her character in the movie is so small that it doesn't detract, but it was a mistake to make this change because it makes Jack seem sleazier. In the book Terra doesn't have a kid, she's just a single girl. The movie beautifully captures the setting that's in the book. I'm familiar with the area and I really enjoyed seeing it on screen and reading Pickett's vivid descriptions of it in the book. He's clealry someone who has maybe romanticized the area a bit, but not in a way that's false or anything. The wine details are dead on and the enfatuation with wine very accurate when I think about some of the people I know who are big into wine. I'm only an amateur connoisseur but I could really feel the author's passion -- through Miles -- for the grape. The writing is clean and flows beautifully for a first novel. The dialogue is very real and incredibly laugh-out-loud funny at times. It's no wonder that the author comes from being a former screenwriter where dialogue is probably everything. I think both the book and the movie will stand the test of time. They're the only fictional pieces about wine and wine-tasting that I know about and for anyone into wine they should almost be required viewing and reading respectively. What I liked about the inclusion of wine is that it's both knowledgeable and irreverent, never snobbish or elitist or effete in any way. Pickett almost seems to be encouraging a neophyte to go to wine tastings and wine regions and step into tasting rooms and not be afraid. He makes it fun, has fun with all the "winespeak" -- as does the movie -- but never tries to diminish the fact that wine is also something that one can become very knowledgeable about. As for me, I've stopped drinking beer and have turned my attention to wine. I understand a lot of people have. Hats off to Pickett for getting people to drink something more sophisticated without feeling like they're going to be put down if they don't know what grape(s) they're drinking or from where or what vintage. The last thing about the book is that, aside from the wine and the comedy and the differences between the it and the movie, is that there are deeper, universal themes being addressed here: middle age and time slipping away while we still continue to dream, the sadness of life changing and moving on, moments where we connect and think we've come to some great understanding of everything and then realize shortly thereafter that we haven't really understood anything. Couching all of this in a comic novel, I think, is a stroke of genius. Without being heavy-handed or ham-fisted, Pickett has written a very real book about middle age, and made us laugh at ourselves along the way. But, in the end, he clearly deeply cares about his characters and I, for one, hope he does another with the same two guys. Interesting to see where they land five years from now.

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Its episodic plot carries it

A series of amusing episodes justifies opening then skimming through this poorly written book.
The characters aren't likeable. One is whiner, the other a slug. The first is dejected because no one who had read his first novel will publish it. These days it's tough to get an agent to even read a chapter.
Admittedly, the author has an ear for conversation; but alas the conversations between two unlikable yuppies are the sort you'd soon tune out in reality.
Oh, and there's a lot about wine but without any real knowledge of the subject. No wine aficionado would consider drinking from a freshly opened red.
The author has one or two memorable sentences, but relies in the main on Swifties--"He walked mordantly," "She laughed tolerantly."
Forget the book; see the movie.

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Excellent novel about friendship, love, and second chances.

If you liked the movie you will love the book. It is better in every way. It's funnier, sadder, and more touching. It also has a more satisfying ending than the movie.

I can't really explain why I liked this book so much. I usually read thrillers and mysteries, but this novel struck a chord with me. I couldn't put it down. I place it right up there with Edward Abbey's The Fool's Progress as one of the best and most touching novels I've ever read. It's not as literary as Abbey's book, but it has a similar emotional impact. It's just good. Read it.

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A good read

The little road-trip book about two rather unlikable characters (but sympathetic) is an enjoyable read. I really like Pickett's voice and his style. The dialogue and the characters are funny. The plot does get repetitive after a while and he does let his narrator (a writer) get into self-indulgence. And I have to say, the movie was better. Still, Pickett's first novel offers a glimpse to the human heart with a unique, fun journey.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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