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| The Irresistible Inheritance Of Wilberforce: A Novel in Four Vintages | 
 enlarge | Author: Paul Torday
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Category: Book
List Price: £12.99
Buy Used: £0.19
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 21326
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0297851594
EAN: 9780297851592
ASIN: 0297851594
Publication Date: February 7, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Title page may be torn or missing. UNREAD but may have minor imperfections such as a crease or mark. In stock - quick dispatch, from an efficient and professional leading British bookselling firm.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Disappointing October 23, 2008
Having thoroughly enjoyed Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, I was looking forward to reading the follow up, expecting the same kind of biting satire and unique feel. My anticipation was heightened by the title.
Sadly I found the book itself a let-down for a number of reasons.
Firstly the characters are strangely wooden, secondly the fact that the book is writtemn back to front gives it an episodic feel rather than enhancing the enjoyment (more of this later) and thirdly because it really is a very ordinary read.
That doesn't mean that it is all bad. There are some enjoyable moments, but sadly all too mnay of these come in the opening chapters before the book slides back in time.
It was a brave attempt to instil originality in starting the book at the end and then working backwards. To my mind this just doesn't work. Knowing what happens spoils it as a story. Why bother to read about the first meeting of Wilberforce and his new acquaintances when it comes at the end of the book and you know exactly what is going to happen. That just makes the later chapters turgid rather than subtle. Some would say that this is an interesting way of telling the story, but sadly it becomes the main talking point of the novel and at the end we are just left in limbo. I would have liked to have known what happens two years into the future and not two years into the past. There is an argument that the style allows one to be almost a voyeur in the life of the central character, but I don't really buy into this.
Ultimately it's a brave attempt to be different but one that backfires. There is little of the originality and characterisation that made Salmon Fishing such a delight.
Highly readable entertainment October 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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 Petrus 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.
 More resistable than they'd have you believable. September 29, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I haven't gone out of my way to write a negative review before but, I'm sorry, this book falls well short of the mark.
It is at least double the length it should be: stop at page 151 and you might gain some satisfaction. The rest is a long, slow, painful death.
I had to see it through to the end to learn why Torday had written it backwards. It had started promisingly with a sense of strong characters and the need to know what happens. Unfortunately, he tells the story by about page 100 and there's little more of interest.
The repetitions of the story from Wilberforce's earlier viewpoint are baffling at first, then I realized he was telling his story from varying moments of increasing clarity. This might have been an effective technique, except - before discovering wine - he was a dull and socially inadequate man. His dullness becomes spattered across the whole thing: two-dimensional characters, stilted and ineffective dialogue, no story, no action. No climax.
Torday clearly wants us to like Francis - but there's nothing there. The suggestion of a father-son link is about as sophisticated as a Neighbours' story-line. Catherine had promise; but she can thank her lucky stars she wasn't allowed to degenerate along with the rest through the last two hundred pages. Ed and Eck? Pointless.
The writing is inconsistent too. There are two adjacent pages, for example, where he has an absolute 'up' frenzy. Every other word is 'up'. Did anybody bother reading this before going to print?
Torday's first book might have been good, but I won't be trying it. He clearly didn't have many ideas left when it came to the second one. All he's managed to do is convince somebody his novella is a novel. If he is to continue to write books with no action and uncomplicated plots, he should learn to create fuller characters and write realistic, convincing dialogue.
This is beach reading at best; but why spoil your holiday? If you want a character who loves Claret, try Horace Rumpole. At least Mortimer knows when to end a story.
Excellent, dark...not funny June 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Now here's a good example of why it's not a good idea to judge a book by its cover. Its design echoes that of Torday's wonderfully funny and original debut Salmon Fishing In The Yemen; so much so that, had you not read the reviews, you could be forgiven for buying The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce assuming that you had your hands on another hilarious and rather touching novel. Well, this isn't very touching and it's certainly not funny.
In fact, it's a relatively dark read about the nature and destructive impact of loneliness. It's also, in rather a big way, about an almost sexual obsession with wine. The two themes are knitted together around a plot which is deftly turned inside out and re-ordered.
Torday is quite some writer: stylish and terribly readable. He has produced two such startlingly different novels that you wonder what's coming next.
 Writing is as fluid as the plonk April 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I cannot drink as alcohol gives me migraine but now I know why people like wine. This book takes us through Wilberforces journey in his new found life after years of being a computor expert he becomes a wine expert. But there is a dark side to this book that is so very clever I got swept into a dangerous vortex of alcohol with Wilberfoce.
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