Vintage Attraction

by Charles Blackstone

Overview

Before Peter met Izzy, he could tell red wine from white wine and knew that cheap Chardonnay was favored by freshman college girls and could give one terrible headache, but that was it. Lonely and frustrated with his career, his life takes a sudden turn when he turns on the TV and is transfixed by the woman staring back at him, swirling a glass of wine in her hand - Isabelle Conway, one of the most preeminent sommeliers in the world. Yet there was something about her, somehow he felt like he already knew her, and after a fateful chance encounter on the streets of Chicago, the two embark on a journey through Greece and navigate the mysteries of wine, and the heart, in this rich and insightful novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781605984827
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	10/22/2013
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Charles Blackstone is the managing editor of Bookslut. His short stories have appeared in Esquire and other publications. He teaches fiction writing at Gotham Writers Workshop and lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

Blackstone’s second novel follows the wine-infused romance of Peter Hapworth, self-described “Conceptualist, Teacher, Chicagoan, Swashbuckler, Eater, Drinker, Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker,” and sommelier Isabelle Conway, star of her own television show, Vintage Attraction. When Peter guests on her show, he winds up with a date, and the two embark on a whirlwind courtship. Izzy’s world is a glamorous one, in contrast to Peter’s drab academic circles and lackluster dating life. In five weeks, their courtship runs its course through Chicago’s restaurant scene, culminating with their hasty elopement. But while Izzy’s fortunes rise, Peter is fired from his teaching job and pulled back into an old relationship.When Izzy’s friend Pacer Rosencrants begins to pursue her, Peter begins to question his bond with Izzy. To test their love, he follows her on a wine tour of Santorini, Greece. Blackstone has created a likable protagonist in Peter, and a worthy love interest in Izzy, toying with the dynamic of pursuer and pursued. His wine world knowledge is impressive, but the story is riddled with clunky wine world puns among otherwise confident prose. However, the boy meets girl, gets girl, loses girl story he tells is a familiar one that the wine world does little to enliven. Agent: Ryan Harbage, Fischer-Harbage Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

If you like pugs, wine, and Greece, Vintage Attraction is for you. I loved every word.

Gary Shytengart

Vintage Attraction will take readers on a wild ride through the world of wine.

Laura Maniec

Vintage Attraction’s magic is that it brilliantly compares discovering wine to something everyone can relate to: falling in love.

Belinda Chang

Tapping into his intimate knowledge of the wine world, Charles Blackstone has created a quirky novel about love, marriage, Greece and, yes, plenty of vino.

CS Magazine

Fiction is often a few beats ahead of the accelerated grimace of reality, as Charles Blackstone demonstrates in this engaging novel about a celebrity sommelier and the hyper-articulate mensch who loves her. A quirky and original novel about love, wine, and marriage.

Jay McInerney

09/01/2013
Peter Hapworth is a 37-year-old part-time adjunct lecturer trying to pay off two grad degrees when he starts a relationship with wine expert and television persona Isabella Conway; through her, he comes to know wine, love, and adult responsibility. After dating just five months, he's now married, co-owner of a pug, and cosigner on a mortgage for the couple's Chicago loft. When career issues, neighbors from hell, and ex-lovers threaten to cork their marriage, Peter and Isabella take off on a wine trip to Greece in search of inspiration. Blackstone's rendering of a disgruntled hipster-slacker-intellectual in the character of Peter is authentic and humorous; the amusing scenes involving academia are written with brilliance and insight. Peter's ex-lover Talia brings a fun element, and Isabella is well drawn, but Peter's first-person point-of-view intellectualisms take precedence over passion. There is a lot about wine; for readers who aren't interested in enology (this word is used in the book several times), the wine descriptions might feel slow. VERDICT Readers of literary fiction who are interested in wine or the Chicago setting will especially like this second novel (after The Week You Weren't Here) by the managing editor of Bookslut.com.—Sonia Reppe, Stickney-Forest View P.L., IL

Library Journal

2013-09-15
A romance built on fine wine threatens to go sour in this light novel with a lot of snarky undertones. Peter, the narrator of the second novel by Blackstone (The Week You Weren't Here, 2005), is a bright 30-something man with a go-nowhere adjunct gig teaching composition at a Chicago university who spends his spare time with his pug and imagines punny, unworkable concepts for restaurants. Despite this lassitude, he manages to win the love of Isabelle, a local celebrity TV-show host who demystifies wine for the masses. Their love blossoms fast--they tie the knot within weeks--but so does trouble: Peter is increasingly running afoul of his bosses, their new condo loft has high-volume neighbors, and an old flame appears to have insinuated himself back into Izzy's life. This is all in service of what's meant to be a comic work of commercial fiction, down to the adorable dog and the make-or-break trip to Greece in the novel's closing chapters. But the book too often feels contrived on the structural and sentence level: Drowsy scenes of parties and tastings are engineered to work in pairing tips but do little to propel the story; the conflicts among Peter, Izzy and her domineering manager are overdramatized and unrealistic; and Izzy's character feels flimsy, her up-from-her-bootstraps back story notwithstanding. Those flaws are exacerbated by stretches of clunky prose. ("Breakfast at one thousand six hundred sixty meters was an alluring and jeopardous bounty.") Blackstone's attempts to give Peter a kind of emotional reckoning are half-hearted at best (indeed, his sniffy solipsism is often presented as a kind of badge of honor) and essentially abandoned by the end thanks to a forced and disappointing deus ex machina plot turn. Blackstone is a witty writer with a great subject, but the plot and tone of his story feels unfinished.

Kirkus Reviews

Charles Blackstone’s writing is as much the work of a winemaker as it is of a novelist. It offers the same rewards in the end as some of the greatest vintages.

Burt Wolf

If you like pugs, wine, and Greece, Vintage Attraction is for you. I loved every word.

Gary Shteyngart