false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172266036m/157387.jpg 157387 11 <i>"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 baptize the first real sorrow of his life."</i> <p> The year is 1808, the place Burgundy, France. Among the lush vines of his family's vineyard, Jodeau, 18 years old and frustrated in love, is about to come face to face with a celestial being. But this is no sentimental "Touched by an Angel" seraph; as imagined by Elizabeth Knox in her wildly evocative and original novel, Xas is equipped with a glorious pair of wings ("pure sinew and bone under a cushion of feathers") and an appetite for earthly pleasures--wine, books, gardening, conversation, and, eventually, carnal love. <p> The fateful meeting between man and angel occurs on June 27. After an evening during which Sobran spills all his troubles and Xas gently advises him, the angel promises to return on the same night next year to toast Sobran's marriage. Thus begins a friendship that will last for 55 years, spanning marriages, wars, births, deaths, and even the vast distances between heaven, earth, and hell. In addition to the wonderfully flawed Sobran and his mysterious angel, Knox brilliantly limns secondary characters who are deeply sympathetic--from Sobran's unstable wife, Celeste, and his troubled brother, Leon, to his dear friend and confidante, the Baroness Aurora. Love, murder, madness, and a singular theology that would make a believer out of the most hardened atheist all add up, in <I>The Vintner's Luck</I>, to a novel that will break your heart yet leave you wishing for more. <I>--Alix Wilber</I> 1129547 book 1998 The Vintner's Luck total:296|5:111|4:99|3:54|2:24|1:8| 296 1169 515 62 3 2 false true Thu Jul 03 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 11 19:30:07 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 03 11:06:17 -0700 2008
The writing was very beautiful -- just poetic enough, without crossing the line into pretentiousness. (Occasionally it was marred by grammatical errors, but I'm a stickler.) I'm not sure what made Sobr...more...]]> 3 2 false false Fri Dec 19 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 18 23:37:03 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 20:19:21 -0800 2008 Neil Gaiman’s “Men of Good Fortun...more...]]> 5 2 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1998 Fri Jun 29 15:33:02 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 03 15:32:51 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon May 05 20:35:45 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 20 09:15:05 -0700 2008 5 1 false false Sat Jul 18 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 08 05:06:12 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 09:54:49 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 02 08:18:08 -0700 2007 Fri Aug 03 13:04:42 -0700 2007
Knox's characters are rich,...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Feb 01 19:32:30 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 26 08:49:18 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 1 false true Sat Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Mon Feb 16 08:12:02 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 16 08:12:20 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Jan 10 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 10 14:52:50 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 11 01:19:46 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Mar 28 17:50:10 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 21:44:25 -0700 2009
I found this to be a beautiful story of friendship and love, and how we humans tend to complicate it. It is about (obviously) a vintner and his friendship with a fallen angel (not so obviously). While this motif could very well be in the realm of sci-fi/fan...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed May 06 11:04:07 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 30 09:28:51 -0700 2009 Wed May 06 11:04:07 -0700 2009 From another review regarding the protagonist: "the wonderfully flawed Sobran". I would agree. Sobran is an amazing character - and never behaves the way I want him to! I am constantly intrigued by the novel. I wondered for a long time w...more...]]> 2 0 false false Mon Jul 13 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 01 06:36:39 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 15 09:21:27 -0700 2009
The story isn’t very strong, relying heavily on its central concept, which means it has to rely on its characters and they weren’t powerful enough to...more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Aug 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 21:24:56 -0700 2009 Sat Oct 03 02:46:38 -0700 2009 I already noted in my review for her YA novel Dreamhunter, her writing style is beautiful and poetic, but not pretentious, and lends an otherworldly quality to the story that you are reading. Even in the most inelegant and even distur...more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Feb 07 21:16:10 -0800 2008 Fri Oct 03 05:28:01 -0700 2008 such a good book. I haven't encountered a book like it before. It's beautifully written. It is incredibly detailed, yet at the same time sparse, as the story is told over 60+ years. The "chapters" are the years that pass, and some chapters are barely a paragraph long, as Knox brief...more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Mar 14 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Tue Feb 19 20:17:25 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 19 20:42:29 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 09 09:19:39 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 09 09:35:01 -0800 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Sep 24 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Sep 24 16:37:21 -0700 2008 Thu Sep 25 07:07:02 -0700 2008 once was enough more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Mar 12 18:30:05 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 12 18:41:41 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Sep 15 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 27 06:51:01 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 29 01:16:07 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Oct 06 10:23:10 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 11 17:25:15 -0700 2009 Unexpected is the word I kept thinking as I was reading this novel. You'd think, given the premise and the structure, that you'd have a pretty good idea of what this novel is about and where it's going, but it takes a lot of strange turns along the way. Really intriguing and fast read, although it s...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=157387