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Sideways: A Novel

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Author: Rex Pickett
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Category: Book

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Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

90 reviews
Sales Rank: 77295

Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 1.3

ISBN: 0312342519
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780312342517
ASIN: 0312342519

Publication Date: October 1, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description

Sideways is the story of two friends-Miles and Jack-going away together for the last time to steep themselves in everything that makes it good to be young and single: pinot, putting, and prowling bars. In the week before Jack plans to marry, the pair heads out from Los Angeles to the Santa Ynez wine country. For Jack, the tasting tour is Seven Days to D-Day, his final stretch of freedom. For Miles--who has divorced his wife, is facing an uncertain career and has lost his passion for living-the trip is a weeklong opportunity to evaluate his past, his future and himself.

A raucous and surprising novel filled with wonderful details about wine, Sideways is also a thought-provoking and funny book about men, women, and human relationships.

Customer Reviews: Read 85 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Sideways August 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Very entertaining, better than the movie if that is possible, but richer in detail and humor. If you love the Central Coast and you LOVE wine, read it.

1 out of 5 stars

After this mess I need a drink... January 16, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful

I have major problems with the novel. First of all it's one of the rare times you'll hear me utter the magic words; "the movie was better than the book", but what makes this all the more depressing is just how much the movie is better. There are times when a film translates a novel so well that it surpasses the printed page, but I don't know if ever there has been a time as drastic as this. I adored Alexander Payne's `Sideways' and was so looking forward to reading Rex Pickett's novel that inspired the film. Sadly, Pickett's novel is not just a bore, but an atrocious one at that.

One major difference between the novel and the film is that in Payne's adaptation the characters seem real. They look like you and me. Miles is overweight, balding, depressed; eccentric. Maya, while beautiful, is not stick thin and is older. Jack looks washed up. He has some charm and a certain extent of good looks but he's also human. Tara is not your typical blonde bombshell. But here, in this novel, everyone is made to appear perfect. It was a turn off. Another turn off was the way in which everyone spoke to one another, especially Jack and Miles. It was so amateurish that it felt forced and immature. Another thing is that none of the characters are likable, not even slightly. Miles is whiney and unsympathetic and Jack is a complete loser who uses everyone around him and has no genuine concern for anyone around him. In fact I can't believe that anyone would want to be his friend, let alone his wife and if I were Miles I would have left him walking home on day one.

The novel sadly just comes across like a young boys fantasy trip, a trip where booze fall from the shelves and women fall at your feet. There is no emotion, no depth. Pickett attempts at the end to give Miles some sort of revelation and it doesn't fit, doesn't mesh and ends up coming short of meaningful. There are few scenes that captured my attention; a comical boar hunt that was omitted from the film being one of the only moments I can remember enjoying this read. All in all this was such a pathetically underwhelming read.

Maybe it had to do with the performances invested by Giamatti, Church and Madsen that made the film so enjoyable, but I can honestly say that this novel bored me to tears. If I had read this novel beforehand I may have never seen the film, it's that horrible.

I know I'm in the minority here, but I can't help but express my true feelings on this novel. It felt like it was 100+ pages too long, the wine descriptions went on forever, the dialog was immature and dreadful to read through and in the end I felt care or concern for no one, and that's never a good thing. I can say one thing, that reading this novel helped me to understand and appreciate Payne's Oscar win for best adapted screenplay. That he was able to take this pathetic excuse for a novel and turn it into a fun and fresh film deserves every award it can muster.

5 out of 5 stars

See the film first, the novel is a worthy compliment January 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I became interested in this novel after I saw the film adaption. That is to say I became interested in the film when I saw it on cable and almost instantly identified with the character Miles. I rented a DVD and that was it, the film became one of my favorites ever. But after watching it so many times and learning of the novel that came before the film, I wanted to see if I could expand the limitations of the film by reading the novel. So, I purchased it a few weeks ago and haven't set it down since. I read it everywhere - at home, inbetween classes in college, in the car if I'm waiting on someone. It's a novel that I identify with so well. You learn a lot about wine very quick into it, but you'll also realize that the novel is much more wide-open and full throttle than the film. Miles is nowhere near as depressed as in the film, or rather he is extremely bipolar. The chartacter of Jack isn't expanded all that much from the film, but there's a few differences. The novel truly is an entirely different animal. It takes you far beyond the film, but I would reccomend watching the film first as it seems to help you understand more and visualize what's going on better, or at least that's how it works for me.

3 out of 5 stars

Tongue in cheek? Still not sure. September 24, 2007
2 out of 6 found this review helpful

I picked this book up a couple of years after first seeing the film. I'd never seen the lead actors before, though Paul Giamatti seems everywhere these days, and really enjoyed the movie version (in large part, note, to a strong Jones for Sandra Oh). I'm about halfway through the novel and it, too, is enjoyable, but it required huge effort to ignore the horribleness of the writing and it amazes me the novel was optioned because of absolutely basic writing flaws. It reads for the most part, like a novel by a Freshman college student who "wants to be an author" in a fiction class. I mean, look at the first line, quoted by Amazon in the sales blurb. Could there be more pretentious, inelegant writing? "It was a dark and stormy night..." quality. The writing only gets worse as you read and it leaves you open mouthed in disbelief. I didn't, and still do not know if it is all tongue in cheek since the main character, the narrator, is a failed author (though he's had some success in film) and maybe his thesaurus-driven hyperbole and inapt descriptive powers are a long running joke. I tend to think Pickett is simply a bad writer. Though I enjoy the situation in the book, this is fueled by my love of wine and had I not seen the movie I would have stopped at page 1.

All of this leads me to wonder how this was ever printed, let alone how the director both got a hold of it and himself managed to hack his way through it. Of course, once the film was made, everyone will ignore reality and jump on the bandwagon of blind praise as we see in the number of 5-star reviews here on Amazon (complete with the seemingly obligatory wine-analogy cliches, like "the story pours out uplifting and warming as a fine pinot..."), but what editor read past the first line and offered to publish this, and why didn't they, if they managed to see the kernel of fun in it, why didn't they EDIT the bad writing out?

In short, I have enjoyed this book so far (page 200) simply through a massive effort of will to ignore the writing and just follow the story line.

4 out of 5 stars

A treasure September 24, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

This book was amazing. I don't know what people are talking about when they say it led to a great movie. The movie was absolute garbage in comparison with the book. They're barely the same. This book was funny and absorbing. The best books are usually about things that you're not interested in. A man's last hurrah before he gets married wasn't something I was interested in, but Rex Pickett made it so endearing. Miles wasn't nearly as boring as in the movie, he had a mischievious spark, there was likability in him. He wasn't as depressed as he was portrayed onscreen. This book was simply a joy to read.

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