Sideways: The Novel, Rex Pickett, St Martin's Griffin, 2004

You can tell Rex Pickett identifies his occupation as being "screenwriter." The way he writes: paragraphs of setting the scene, drawnout flowery descriptions of gardens and rolling hills not seen since the Victorians. He wants you to be seeing the movie, not reading the book.

I would rather have been seeing the movie again, rather than having read this book.

In a word? Pretentious.

In two words? Totally sucky.

In case you don't know what the book's about: two guys go on a road trip through Californian wine country. Jack's about to get married. He's charming, fun, doesn't take life too seriously. Miles is a depressive, struggling writer, with a wine obsession. The book is, in a nutshell, about that week, and the lead up to the wedding. Throw in some sexy ladies, pinot noir and a 2 star motel, and that's their week.

Okay, okay - I admit it. I read the book after I saw the movie. For one reason only - I enjoyed the movie, but I detested the characters. An afternoon spent eating oranges and browsing the eyesore that is Amazon.com led me to reviews of "the book is much better than the movie!" and "I liked the characters more". I wanted more depth. I wanted to know more about the motivations of these characters - aside from the fact he's poor as hell, why does Miles steal from his mother? Why is Jack so promiscuous? How can it be that a week before his wedding he feels no guilt about new sexual conquests? What are these guys doing?

This book is the middle-aged man equivalent of Judy Blume. No wait ... I love Judy Blume. Rather, I did when I was 12, but now she seems simplistic and lame. His writing style is woeful. Just, God-awful.

There is one exception to the almost complete crapulence of this book.

A few days after I finished reading it, I was walking from my home to the supermarket. I saw two guys standing in the street, talking. Perhaps a little older than me, pretty casual looking. For the first time in my life, I was actually curious about the conversation between two ordinary men. That has never happened before! I just wanted to know what these two guys were talking about, how they knew each other, and simple stuff like that. So maybe I see men in a slightly altered way.

I could be much nicer about this review. I could. But the truth is, I'm a crotchety 24 year old law student, with not a lot of money to live on week to week, and I blew 25 dollars on kindling. As one of my friends said to me "that was a pretty brave thing to do, to actually buy that piece of crap".

Brave, no.

Stupid, yes.

1.5 out of 5 stars, motherfucker.