I don't know how many of you realise this, but from the age of 11 or so, I grew up in New Zealand. Our English curriculum makes it compulsory for us to do a reading log for every English class, covering a variety of books. In order to support our local heritage the log needs to include at least one book by a local NZ author each year. Shouldn't be too hard, right? We produced Joy Cowley, Maurice Gee, Katherine Mansfield, Phillip Mann and Witi Ihimaera. Shouldn't be too hard at all.Except for one problem, of course. I loved the Shadrach books, and of course I'd read Whale Rider. The Doll's House and Mrs Brill are two of my favourite short stories by local authors. The real trouble, however, was with my inability to find a local author whose work became 'a book I liked' rather than 'a book by an NZ author that I liked'. Note that I say Mansfield's short stories are only among my favourite locally-written stories. I spent years looking for a book written by someone locally which I could rank right up with my 'books I love regardless of the author's nation of origin'. To love an author regardless of any sense of Kiwi loyalty would be nice.So rewind a little to sixth-form English class. Ms. Titter (yes, that was her real name, and yes, she had breasts worthy of her name) sends me off to the library during class because my 'local author' segment for my reading log is blank. I trudge down reluctantly, having used up a majority of my stock reviews for the log in earlier years (one can only review so many Joy Cowley books as a young adult, trust me). About two minutes into my search and I decide, in the way I always did until I hit Uni and had to be responsible for myself, that I can't be bothered. So I procrastinate. Casually, I stroll down to the 'K's and decide to flick through a King volume until the bell goes. I'm looking, looking... Nothing. Ah f--Hang on, what's this? It's a beautiful spine of silver with a lovely red font, subtle and clean, eye-catching in its simplicity. Oh hey, beautiful. Wanna come home with me?I pick the book out of the tightly packed-shelf. It has a black koru mark on the cover under the school library logo, indicating that it's by a local author. Score! The cover is smooth and cool to the touch. I turn to the back cover, expecting a story based in NZ or with some NZ influence, as I often find this is what local authors tend to write about. Imagine my surprise when I see nothing but praise for the book, something I've never seen on a NZ book cover before. Praise from the U.K. Times, praise from Entertainment Weekly, praise from Independent Sunday...Hang on. Really? Well alright then. Hey beautiful. You're coming home with me."1808 Vin bourru (new wine)A week after midsummer, when the festival fires were cold, and decent people were in bed an hour after sunset, not lying dry-mouthed in dark rooms at midday, a young man named Sobran Jodeau stole two of the freshly bottled wines to baptise the first real sorrow of his life."Oh hel-lo, beautiful. I think we'll get along just fine.I firmly believe in one thing above all else; a book's opening page, and especially that crucial opening sentence, can make or break it for the reader. That single line there *points* shows how this book is going to turn out from the get-go. Every sentence in this book is just that beautiful, with each word treated with the respect it deserves as it is carefully placed within the sentence and woven into the story. There's a subtlety that's indicated in the cover, yes, but also a tenderness, a sense of kinship and a persistent underlying feeling of secrets waiting to be told. That sentence promises the world, and the story delivers.Not only did it pique my curiosity as to what Sobran's issue was, it's also very indicative of Sobran's behaviour and personality. He's stubborn, so he does what he wants. He's simple, but self-aware. He's young, he feels too much and he's got a lot to learn."Someone had set a statue down on the ridge. Sobran blinked and swayed. For a second he saw what he knew - gilt, paint and varnish, the sculpted labial eyes of a church statue. Then he swooned while still walking forward, and the angel stood quickly to catch him."For a book that hinges on poetic, the stark abruptness of that reveal is odd, startling, much like Xas himself."'God help you,' Xas said, with feeling."Please, go ahead. It's perfectly fine. I didn't need my heart anyway. Go ahead, take what you want.I should have known that I'd love him anyway, because he reads. I have such a hideous, awful weakness for anyone who loves to read, enough so to spend his spare time creating a library. He's happy, "so long as the books keep appearing"."They stopped under Jacob Wrestles with an Angel.'Which angel was it?' Sobran asked, looking up at the capital. Xas could always be distracted by a question.'That was Yahweh, I think,' Xas said, 'being obtuse.'"His curiosity is wonderful. Xas is like a child in that way, he's seen the world but he still feels ignorant, he's still surprised by the little things and he's constantly thirsting to learn more about people, about life, about religion, about humanity, about himself and about everything. He's sweet, he's kind, he's confused, he's careless, he's indecisive, he's innocent in the face of expectation... He's perfect. He's perfect, from beginning to bittersweet end, and even the sequel can't destroy him."Aurora felt she had come to her own execution. She looked around for an avenue of escape. The surgeon stood over her. He had no colour in his face. She didn't want to watch as he laid out the knives. Someone draped a cloth over her face. She was dead already."Aurora is utterly magnificent. In 19th century Europe, she's well-read despite being a woman. She handles the estate, the vineyards and her father's business. She's unafraid to criticise, she's exhaustingly curious and she won't think twice before being honest. She doesn't let her marriage define her, she gives her children a chance to think for themselves and she supports her friends with an unfailing sense of loyalty. She's pretty much a woman completely out of her time, and she'd be out of character if she weren't hindered by the customs and restrictions that her time-period and society place on her. It's the fact that she tries to work around it despite the overwhelming expectations that makes her so admirable. I wish I were half the woman she is."'I'm sorry, Sobran.'"Then there's Léon, Céleste, Paul, Baptiste, Bernard, Antoine... The book is rich with varied characters and an ever-changing storyline. It's about Sobran's life, more than anything else, and the impact Xas has on it. So of course the story changes a bit, because life is full of changes and surprises. It's endlessly fascinating and written so beautifully that it makes me ache.When I finished this, I cried. I still cry every time I read it. It's beautifully written, carefully thought-out and so full of emotion that it's hard not to fall in love, even if you know you shouldn't."Sobran caught the angel's hands and held them. 'I've found you,' he said, then, 'I have an idea. Listen.'"It took me several years, but I found a story that I loved regardless of the author. Go figure. I read the library copy and bought my own the very next day. I then read that one until it fell to pieces. My second copy ended much the same way. My third, so far, is faring better, but if it falls apart I'll be buying it again. No amount of money in the world will balance out my love for this."You fainted and I caught you. It was the first time I'd supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity. Impossible."If you haven't read this, I can fix that. I'm hosting a giveaway here. If you want a copy of this book, well, here you go. I have three to give away.Giveaway closed. Sorry guys!
tl;dr SUMMARY VERSION: In The Vintner’s Luck, Book, I recommend an awesome concept, some interesting if distant characters, ~tragic gay angel love~, some thought-provoking religious mythology, some effective poetic language (infinite descriptions of wing movements, dead leaves, the Napoleonic Wars), a fast read, refreshing anti-agism (old people having sex! THE SCANDAL). I caution against somewhat distant, unlikeable characters (and a massive cast), somewhat anticlimactic gay angel sex, some Twilight-style purple prose, and a nagging sense that this could have been so much more. For fans of: gay angel fanfiction, metaphors, interspecies romance, character studies, gossip, gay angels whose names rhyme with “lass”, winemakingOKAY SO HERE’S THE DEAL: I kind of liked this book. I kind of liked the movie. I disliked them, and liked them, for entirely different reasons, which makes sense because they are not remotely the same story. This turns out to be deeply unfortunate, because expecting one to be anything like the other only leads to disappointment (and disgruntlement, what with all the IF ONLYs). The Vintner’s Luck, the book, is an extended metaphor on copies and symmetry as a French peasant and an angel fall in love and tangle with both the grand mythologies of Heaven and Hell and the domestic dramas of a small village (amid approximately a bajillion characters and subplots including marriages, re-marriages, murders, scholarship, wine-making, cancer, erotic asphyxiation, childbirth, and botany). The entire thing revolves around the ups, downs, and slooooow development of this relationship and its resulting consequences. (The Vintner’s Luck, the movie, is a lovingly-documented homage to wine-making in the French countryside as a peasant dude named Sobran has lots of wine and children and sex with his hot wife and a wine-tasting widowed baroness. Oh, and every so often the dude talks to an angel with the face of Gaspard Ulliel for like three minutes...I have a whoooole separate essay on that thing but anyway). NITTY-GRITTY BOOK REVIEW MOMENTS: What the Sam Hill is this style. What. It is literally Metaphorception; SIMILE WITHIN METAPHOR WITHIN SIMILE! IN A METAPHOR! GREAT GOOGLY WOMAN JUST SAY SOMETHING OUTRIGHT FOR ONE SENTENCE JFCSo you stumble through the frankly atrocious bogs of metaphor in the first third of the novel, going Someday this will be rewarded by gay angel sex. Someday. If that be what you seek, reader, you best go get yo’self some Anne Rice instead. Knox reads like a sort of neo-Rice, with all the heaving, extended clauses and hyperbole, but more awkward and less sensually dreamy. Sample quote: “Rich men would pay fortunes for even one ounce of the angel’s spit. His every secretion a potent love potion, sweet-scented, innocent as snow, fresh after days in the warmth, the proved yeast of greasy sheets.” Uh, what? Not sexy. Also, ‘potent love potion’? ‘Innocent as snow’? I have read fanfiction less cringeworthy. Xas is far and away the most interesting thing happening here – you can never quite get a read on Sobran the winemaker (Is he likable? Not sure. Relatable? Not sure…), the idea of his Baroness ladyfriend turns out to be more awesome than how she’s written (she could have been fleshed out into a serious badass), and his wife is just off on the sidelines being crazy. Xas’ injury, mutilation, and difficult transformative recovery are definitely the book’s high point (What can I say, I like my gay angels bloody). Not to be spoiler queen, but Lucifer shows up and gets shit done, Aurora the baroness cancer survivor figures shit out, and Knox creates a wonderfully creepy atmosphere when literally all sorts of shit starts dying supernaturally. If only Xas could have been pretty and dying and Sobran in a heartbreak coma ALL the time! Some parts were creative (his things about walls! Of course! his thing about distances! Of course!).Some part were engaging (I THINK MY DAD IS SLEEPING WITH MY INSANELY HOT ‘TUTOR FROM IRELAND’ DUN DUN DUNNN’), Some parts were lyrically, poetically lovely ("Despair is gravity. What an appetite it has, hotter than hellfire. "Here, let me have you," it says." Combined with the epigraph and the final paragraph - whoa amazing.)...but just some. Which is unbelievably annoying, because if you showed me those three moments about gravity and told me they came from a French peasant and an angel in love UGH MY HEART OH MY GOD FEELINGS. and yet somehow in context of what she does it's just like...oh, hm, that was pretty. Also, Knox has like 45 balls in the air at once. Sobran has like 25 children; I could not keep them straight to save my life. Then they all got married and had more children, and I was just like WHAT THE FUCK ARE ALL THESE FRENCH NAMES WHO ARE YOUThe standout characters (in both book and movie) are those with the least screentime – in the movie, fatally, Xas is pretty and interesting and a flitting afterthought; in the book he’s so distant as to be unrelatable and the book’s most engaging moments almost all revolve around Lucifer’s badass appearance. Frustratingly, I felt much more interested in him than the angel we’d spent the last 200 pages on, and felt I knew him better, and I liked him more. LUCI COME BACKAnyway, if I spent two hours watching this movie and three hours reading this book and an hour writing this, SOMETHING engaging was going on – but I’m afraid it might be that the concept of both is imaginative and cool and romantic (French peasant spends one night a year falling in love with an angel in his 1815 vineyard, I mean THAT IS A GOOD ONE) and then both mediums almost completely fail to capitalize. SIIIIIIIGH.
Do You like book The Vintner's Luck (2000)?
Update: That settles it, this is officially getting classified as a reread, even though I only ever reread the scenes between Sobran and Xas and skip the rest. But still - 4 stars for a book that's two-thirds filler? Yeah, for some reason I like this one a lot. Knox plays a bit fast and loose with Christianity but as someone who's played a bit fast and loose with it myself, that doesn't bother me. And the whole Sobran-Xas story is so hopelessly romantic that I turn into a gooey-eyed teenage girl every time.=================A lovely, moving, and only slightly ridiculous story about a 19th century French vintner who falls in love with an angel. I'm reprinting this person's review because I couldn't have put it better myself: "This book had me totally confused at the beginning but half way through it gets good, then the end is a bit lackluster. But hot gay angel sex and the descriptions of heaven and hell are highlights." I concur.
—Katie M.
My flatmate recommended this to me with much high praise. And read my copy before I got my hands on it, and cried at it a lot. I have to confess, when I started reading it, I didn't really get into it. The story is about a man who agrees to meet an angel (or an angel who agrees to meet a man?) at the same time every year, for one night every year. The story focuses on these meetings, so what we get are glimpses into a life. It isn't just the meetings, but it focuses mostly on them, rather than the minutiae of daily life. As a consequence, it takes time to get to know the characters. I think it was that that kept me from getting too deeply into the story.It actually reminds me of a line from the first page: He took a swig of the friand, tasted fruit and freshness, a flavour that turned briefly and looked back over its shoulder at the summer before last, but didn't pause even to shade its eyes. And then: Again he tasted the wine's quick backward look, its spice -- flirtation and not love.Not only is that a lovely thought, and it tastes nice to synaesthetic little me, but it kind of describes how I felt about the book at first.I didn't really know what to expect from the story. There's a little mystery in it, about some murders that happen in the area, and then there's the love story between the man and the angel. I found both of them compelling. There are also glimpses into heaven and hell, provided by Xas, the angel, and the intervention of Lucifer -- things that really point at a greater plot, I suppose, but we see it framed in the same way as Sobran, the human, does.The writing is also nice. It probably wouldn't surprise you to know that this book tasted, as a whole, like wine, but it wasn't always the same kind of wine. I didn't read that much of the book aloud, actually, but it was still strongly synaesthetic for me. (I can't imagine books without synaesthesia. You'll have to pardon me always explaining books in synaesthetic terms: sometimes, there are no others.)The love story is the part that really captured me, I have to say. It isn't easy, Xas holding back from it, and then Sobran becoming angry and not wanting to see Xas, and then Xas' disappearance... There's enough of it to catch hold of your heart, though, and when you're reaching the end of the book, it really, really begins to hurt.I didn't actually cry, although it was a close thing: I was desperate to read the last twenty pages, so had to read them under my grandparents' eagle eyes, and that wasn't conducive to a full-on sob fest...I really do love the last lines:You fainted and I caught you. It was the first time I'd supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity.Impossible.
—Nikki
Set in Burgundy and spanning the years 1808 to 1863, The Vintner's Luck tells the magical, spellbinding story of Sobran Jodeau, a vintner from the village of Aluze. On a midsummer's night, Sobran's life is forever changed when he is visited by an angel named Xas, a gorgeous creature with wings that smell of snow. The Vintner's Luck is definitely a character-driven novel and while each character certainly shines, it is the love and friendship shared by Sobran, the Baroness Aurora and the angel Xas that steals the show--and the reader's heart. All, however, is not sweetness and light. The scene in which Lucifer visits Xas and the consequences that follow are heartbreaking to the core. Some scenes are brutal, but necessary. I could find absolutely no mistakes in this perfect novel. The characters were fully drawn and believable, the prose lyrical yet clear, and the pacing perfect throughout. The Vintner's Luck is a book that achieves enormous depth while retaining a simple, fairy-tale quality--all to the good.
—Judith
