On the HahaFiction shelf

Sideways

by Rex Pickett

Sideways · Book 1

Jack is getting married, and his friend Miles joins him for a week in California wine country beforehand. Jack plans to make full use of his remaining bachelor days. Miles, divorced and discouraged about his writing, brings a different set of problems to the tasting rooms.

Contemporary & literary Dry wit Farce

From the publisher’s blurb

“a thought-provoking and funny book about men, women, and human relationships.”

Read the full description at Blackstone Publishing

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What makes it funny?

Miles has a cultivated wine vocabulary and a much less orderly life. Kirkus singles out his bemused observations, then points to a wild-boar hunt and Jack's sexual escapades as excursions into slapstick and bedroom farce.

The comedy at work

The friends keep pulling the trip in different directions. Miles pauses to consider love and disappointment while Jack pursues his next conquest; their week gives those reflections plenty of embarrassing interruptions.

Try this if…

Wine enthusiasts may enjoy the tasting detail, while readers of adult friendship stories get two men whose pleasures and failings are closely entangled. Expect more from Miles's narrative observations than a stream of sharp dialogue: Kirkus praised the former and found the latter ordinary.

Good to know

Heavy drinking, sexual escapades and the unhappiness of divorce and career failure share the page with the comedy. This is the novel adapted into Alexander Payne's Sideways; Vertical and Sideways Chile continue the characters' story.