It’s not like he could name this ‘Check, Please!’

 VINTAGE ATTRACTION by Charles Blackstone

You know that feeling when you pick up a book, start reading, and are like THIS IS THE STORY OF MY LIFE. Totally what I was expecting this book to be, for a few reasons. Number one: It’s set in Chicago, and more specifically, set in my day job. That’s a weird sentence, let me start over:

From 9 to 5 and sometimes much later into the evening, between hour-long El trips during which I cram down novel after novel, I’m an editor/writer at a Chicago travel magazine, which immediately makes people say “OMG I’m soo jealous! Do you go to France, like, all the time?” And then I do that condescending laugh that types out something like Santa’s “ho, ho, ho,” then explain, oh no, honey. I don’t get any farther than Evanston. But it’s TOTALLY WORTH IT, because I get to travel everywhere in Chicago, especially the coolest bars and the most drool-worthy and chic restaurants.

So yeah, I kinda knew the story behind Chicagoan Charles Blackstone’s Vintage Attraction (On another note here, Blackstone’s a total book nerd as well; he’s a managing editor over at bookslut.com/writer of some great and more focused reviews than this one). The story reads from the mind of this neurotic (in his own words) Woody-Allen-esque college professor Peter Hapworth, a guy who’d love to be classy and know all this cool stuff about wine, but really, his only forte is like, preposition placement. So the plot goes, this average-guy’s life gets shaken—not stirred—up (forgot to mention, I’m writing this imaging one of those movie-commercial narrators is reading it aloud to you, so go with it) when a pitch to the beautiful Isabelle Conway, sommelier and host of the fancy teach-me-how-to-wine show “Vintage Attraction,” leads to their first date. From there, the two begin a whirlwind romance through the tasting menus of Chicago to the wines of Greece.

Cool. Novel, yeah. Totally fiction. EXCEPT it’s  hard to read it that way when you know this Woody-Allen-looking Blackstone guy–the actual author–is actually married to ALPANA SINGH, owner of the Boarding House, Master-and-a-half Sommelier, Chicago-It-Girl and former face of the restaurant powerhouse that is Lettuce Entertain You. She’s a real cool lady, for those of you that this is not impressing in the slightest. Oh, maybe you saw her in the last decade or so as the host of the Chicago restaurant review show, Check Please!? If not, there’s also the fact that she earned her Master Sommelier’s title at 21, making her the youngest woman to reach that level ever.

So for a girl coming into this being like, “oh, it’s a novel about his love story to Alpana!” it’s tricky to read as anything other than dirty details into their relationship. NOT FAIR, I know. It is a NOVEL I had to keep telling myself so every time I read a detail and was like, ohhhh, so that’s how it went down! Or, dammit Blackstone, you were totally being an asshole! It was a little difficult to separate reality from the story at times; probably my fault for having one tab open to Eater all day every day.

But, that said, YOU totally should. Learn from my mistakes. Read this novel, because:

(1) You’ve got an approachable protagonist, one who dines at Milk & Honey and doesn’t necessarily know what region, uh red? wine comes from until the end of the story;

(2) The killer female lead who adapts the boy into HER life. It’s refreshing. It’s as if Annie Hall took Woody Allen into her Californian life at the end of the movie instead of going back to where HE has a life;

(3) Obviously, you’re going to need to know most of this when you visit Chicago (who- and wherever you are, you should visit). He changes the names of people, but the restaurants are all real. I was name-checking along the whole time, like oh yeah, they do have good brunch. I’m lame.

Chicago lit FOREVER.