What do you think?
Rate this book
Intoxicated: A Novel of Money, Madness, and the Invention of the World's Favorite Soft Drink
In this unforgettable debut novel, John Barlow reveals how the intersection of a Victorian-era family, an irrepressible marketing wiz, and the temperance movement changed the way the world drinks. Sweeping readers back in time to a day and age when beverages didn't come by the can or the cooler and were often hard to come by at all, Intoxicated once again proves Barlow to be a writer whose “imagination appears unlimited, almost attuned to a parallel world” ( New York Times Book Review ). Yorkshire, 1869. When self-made Victorian businessman Isaac Brookes returns home from his wool mill in France, he cannot suspect that a chance encounter on a train will alter the gastronomical landscape of the world. But when Isaac meets, and almost kills, Rodrigo Vermilion -- a hunchback midget dressed in rags -- Vermilion sees in pragmatic Isaac a grand opportunity to improve his lot in life, and becomes determined to go into business with the Yorkshire man. Enter the Temperance Soldiers, a band of righteous social moralists who offer Vermilion the inspiration, and the idea he so desperately needs. One taste of his first Temperance Ale -- worse, he felt sure, than the ancient slime at the bottom of the pond, old frog juice, and duck droppings scooped up in a glass -- and this savvy schemer with a genius for persuasion is off and running. He soon convinces Isaac and his son to invest their fortune in an idea sure to appeal to Victorian Rhubarilla, a fizzy, fruity drink. And so begins the craze that will sweep the world in ways that even the irrepressible Vermilion never could have imagined.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
368 pages, Hardcover
Published February 7, 2006
36 people want to read
About the author
John Barlow
52 books49 followersJohn Barlow's prize-winning fiction and non-fiction has been published by HarperCollins/William Morrow, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 4th Estate and various others in the UK, US, Australia, Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain and Poland.
His current project is the Joe Romano crime thriller series. The first novel, RIGHT TO KILL, is out in the UK with HQ/HarperCollins on June 24th, 2021.
***
John was born in West Yorkshire, England, in 1967. He worked as a musician before studying English Literature at Cambridge University and language acquisition at Hull University. After teaching English for several years, he moved to Spain to write full-time, and has been there ever since. He is married to Susana, with whom he has two sons. They currently live in the Galician city of A Coruña.
Apart from writing fiction, he also works as a ghost writer and journalist. He has written for the Washington Post, Slate.com, Penthouse, Departures Magazine and The Big Issue, and he is currently a feature writer for the award-winning food magazine Spain Gourmetour.
***
John's first published work, a novella, won the Paris Review's Discovery (Plimpton) Prize in 2002. He went on to publish a collection of novellas, EATING MAMMALS, the novel INTOXICATED, set in the late nineteenth century, and EVERYTHING BUT THE SQUEAL, a food-travelogue about Spain. He then published the off-beat noir novel WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JERRY PICCO?, and three novels in the LS9 series, featuring amateur sleuth John Ray.
John has also worked with the conceptual artists goldin+enneby on their ACÉPHALE project, which has so far taken him to Nassau, Bergamo, Oslo and London, and into the company of Bahamian off-shore bankers, defamation layers, prize-winning artists, and Martina Navratilova. His writing for the project has been published variously in English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Portuguese, and has featured at numerous art shows/galleries in the UK, the US, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Italy. The novel HEADLESS, based on the project, was release in 2013.
His current project is the Joe Romano crime thriller series. The first novel, RIGHT TO KILL, is out in the UK with HQ/HarperCollins on June 24th, 2021.
***
John was born in West Yorkshire, England, in 1967. He worked as a musician before studying English Literature at Cambridge University and language acquisition at Hull University. After teaching English for several years, he moved to Spain to write full-time, and has been there ever since. He is married to Susana, with whom he has two sons. They currently live in the Galician city of A Coruña.
Apart from writing fiction, he also works as a ghost writer and journalist. He has written for the Washington Post, Slate.com, Penthouse, Departures Magazine and The Big Issue, and he is currently a feature writer for the award-winning food magazine Spain Gourmetour.
***
John's first published work, a novella, won the Paris Review's Discovery (Plimpton) Prize in 2002. He went on to publish a collection of novellas, EATING MAMMALS, the novel INTOXICATED, set in the late nineteenth century, and EVERYTHING BUT THE SQUEAL, a food-travelogue about Spain. He then published the off-beat noir novel WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO JERRY PICCO?, and three novels in the LS9 series, featuring amateur sleuth John Ray.
John has also worked with the conceptual artists goldin+enneby on their ACÉPHALE project, which has so far taken him to Nassau, Bergamo, Oslo and London, and into the company of Bahamian off-shore bankers, defamation layers, prize-winning artists, and Martina Navratilova. His writing for the project has been published variously in English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Portuguese, and has featured at numerous art shows/galleries in the UK, the US, Canada, Brazil, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Italy. The novel HEADLESS, based on the project, was release in 2013.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 1, 2010
the atmosphere in this one is dark and dreary, yet colorful in a sinister-funfair kind of way. the suspense is very subtle and I've been actually having fun in the process. when i look back, i remember it being suffused with rich reds and greens, full of quirky and lovable characters and.. i also miss that little man gravely..this wordy magic felt like some of my weirdest dreams..luv it!
March 28, 2008
Intoxicating indeed. A madcap adventure of a book with fascinating characters and beautiful description. I could almost taste the rhubarilla and I have to confess that I spent at least a few minutes researching to make sure I really couldn't buy any.
October 5, 2021
A hilarious, brilliantly written, imaginative story about "Rhubarilla: A Tonic ... A Treat ... Try It!"
January 17, 2015
Five years after "Eating Mammals," John Barlow is back with another gastronomical story that's as surprising, funny and satisfying as a good belch. The British writer is something of a master at concocting what could be called "sentimental grotesques," and Intoxicated , a novel about the development of an improbable soft drink made from rhubarb, delivers a strange but irresistible mix of flavors.
We meet young George Brookes in 1863 when he's whirling around upside down, vomiting. His mother, Sarah, has discovered him eating rhubarb leaves in the yard and is determined to spin the poison out of his little body. George survives, of course (rhubarb leaves aren't all that toxic), but over the next topsy-turvy decade, that scene congeals into a family legend that captures the blend of disorientation, despair and hilarity that enters their lives during the course of this novel.
Sarah's husband, Isaac, is a shrewd businessman of "confounded eccentricity" who has finally noticed the general disarray at home. He decides to sell off his lucrative wool factory in France and settle down with his wife and sons in Leeds, England, for good. But his retirement lasts only about 15 minutes before he accidentally saves the life of a flamboyant midget named Roderick Vermilion, who convinces him to pour his fortune into the development of a nonalcoholic drink to satisfy the growing temperance movement. (The air is already bubbling with rumors about carbonated beverages in America.)
Even before his family has perfected a secret recipe in the kitchen, Isaac has set up a manufacturing system and built a rhubarb cartel that promises supplies and profits year-round. His long-suffering wife never really expected him to settle down anyway; she's just grateful that this crazy scheme keeps everyone's mind off her impending death. Under Vermilion's gassy encouragement, young George discovers he has a knack for writing advertising jingles, despite his severe dyslexia, and for the first time he dares to think of himself as something besides a kindly simpleton. Only the elder son, Tom, resists these plans, realizing his days of drinking and whoring away Dad's fortune are threatened by the fast-talking midget who dresses like a leprechaun.
While their madcap plans ferment, Barlow adds a number of serious and even tragic ingredients. It's almost not fair how much he makes us care for these silly, vulnerable people. The marriage of Sarah and Isaac spans the poles of devotion and negligence that only two people deeply in love can understand -- or forgive. And poor George can't possibly mature until he suffers the shattering realization that his older brother is a brutal, selfish man.
In a sense, Barlow has stirred up a batch of fiction that's not unlike the strange drink Vermilion devises: "When anyone sampled Rhubarilla," the narrator writes, "its mystery got them immediately, and they fell like enchanted infants under the spell of its strange, unknowable taste. From the very first sip it inveigled its way through their gums, down into the roots of their teeth. Of course, they would tell themselves, it does seem to taste like rhubarb, but . . . what is it . . . that tingling-sweetness, sour-and-sugary, damn it, what's the word? Not rhubarb, no, no . . . ! It's . . . it's. . . . I know it . . . right on the tip of my tongue. . . . That was the key to it. That was how Rhubarilla got you, insidiously, but innocently. Liquid hypnotism."
Before you know it, under Barlow's spell and the scent of boiling sugar and mashed rhubarb, you're settling down 130 years later to consider the mixture of hype and hope that still drives consumer marketing, sells over-the-counter medicines and makes us reach reflexively for cold, brown liquids in aluminum cans. A few minutes of listening to Vermilion promise "a draft of happiness" in every bottle are enough to excite anyone's skepticism, but Intoxication delivers the goods. It's the real thing.
This review first appeared in The Washington Post::
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
We meet young George Brookes in 1863 when he's whirling around upside down, vomiting. His mother, Sarah, has discovered him eating rhubarb leaves in the yard and is determined to spin the poison out of his little body. George survives, of course (rhubarb leaves aren't all that toxic), but over the next topsy-turvy decade, that scene congeals into a family legend that captures the blend of disorientation, despair and hilarity that enters their lives during the course of this novel.
Sarah's husband, Isaac, is a shrewd businessman of "confounded eccentricity" who has finally noticed the general disarray at home. He decides to sell off his lucrative wool factory in France and settle down with his wife and sons in Leeds, England, for good. But his retirement lasts only about 15 minutes before he accidentally saves the life of a flamboyant midget named Roderick Vermilion, who convinces him to pour his fortune into the development of a nonalcoholic drink to satisfy the growing temperance movement. (The air is already bubbling with rumors about carbonated beverages in America.)
Even before his family has perfected a secret recipe in the kitchen, Isaac has set up a manufacturing system and built a rhubarb cartel that promises supplies and profits year-round. His long-suffering wife never really expected him to settle down anyway; she's just grateful that this crazy scheme keeps everyone's mind off her impending death. Under Vermilion's gassy encouragement, young George discovers he has a knack for writing advertising jingles, despite his severe dyslexia, and for the first time he dares to think of himself as something besides a kindly simpleton. Only the elder son, Tom, resists these plans, realizing his days of drinking and whoring away Dad's fortune are threatened by the fast-talking midget who dresses like a leprechaun.
While their madcap plans ferment, Barlow adds a number of serious and even tragic ingredients. It's almost not fair how much he makes us care for these silly, vulnerable people. The marriage of Sarah and Isaac spans the poles of devotion and negligence that only two people deeply in love can understand -- or forgive. And poor George can't possibly mature until he suffers the shattering realization that his older brother is a brutal, selfish man.
In a sense, Barlow has stirred up a batch of fiction that's not unlike the strange drink Vermilion devises: "When anyone sampled Rhubarilla," the narrator writes, "its mystery got them immediately, and they fell like enchanted infants under the spell of its strange, unknowable taste. From the very first sip it inveigled its way through their gums, down into the roots of their teeth. Of course, they would tell themselves, it does seem to taste like rhubarb, but . . . what is it . . . that tingling-sweetness, sour-and-sugary, damn it, what's the word? Not rhubarb, no, no . . . ! It's . . . it's. . . . I know it . . . right on the tip of my tongue. . . . That was the key to it. That was how Rhubarilla got you, insidiously, but innocently. Liquid hypnotism."
Before you know it, under Barlow's spell and the scent of boiling sugar and mashed rhubarb, you're settling down 130 years later to consider the mixture of hype and hope that still drives consumer marketing, sells over-the-counter medicines and makes us reach reflexively for cold, brown liquids in aluminum cans. A few minutes of listening to Vermilion promise "a draft of happiness" in every bottle are enough to excite anyone's skepticism, but Intoxication delivers the goods. It's the real thing.
This review first appeared in The Washington Post::
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...
Read
June 29, 2009What an odd book. I don't know how it ever got published. Every thing about it is strange. The plot was all over the place; there was no cohesion whatsoever. The characters were also all over the place. Their personalities made no sense. Why would Isaac Brookes, a wealthy, successful businessman, agree to go into business with a dirty, homeless, humpbacked midget he meets on a train? This midget, Rodrigo Vermilion, was so over-the-top, he was written as if the author expected this to be turned into a movie. The author also seemed to delight in descriptions of death, illness, vomit, diarrhea, spittle dribbling down someone's chin. We read about these things in intense detail. Why is that necessary? It's as if the author is a 10-year-old boy, telling a story full of exaggeration and goriness! This book is another example of a writer going overboard with his research. In his acknowledgments he credits many people with helping him with his research on the Victorian era. Most of it ends up as extremely boring, overly-detailed patches throughout the book. (He had to get it in!) The end hints that this is the story of the origin of Coca-Cola (Vermilion ends up in Atlanta, Georgia). Not believable at all. A terrible book.
April 21, 2010
This book started out really badly. I did not want to continue reading after the first chapter or two. It reminded me a lot of Eragon and the author who wants so badly to be an AUTHOR that he writes in a pretty ridiculous style. After the first act, though, he settled down a bit and the story was such that I wanted to keep reading and find out what happened. The ending was very disappointing. I mean, not disappointing if you compare it to the beginning, but compared to the middle third of the book. The characters do things, but very little motivation is ever explained, and not enough information is given to infer regarding some characters motivations - Vermillion at the end of the story. All in all, it wasn't a terrible read, but I won't read it again, and it would be a recommend only if someone is on vacation and has absolutely nothing else to read.
March 19, 2012
Bizarre; compelling.
This sums it up (for me):
"Beneath the madcap tone of this exuberant tale runs a thread of life’s truths and families’ woes all bottled up in bizarre fashion. A great historical spoof from a highly imaginative writer."
-- Tess Allegra, http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org...
This sums it up (for me):
"Beneath the madcap tone of this exuberant tale runs a thread of life’s truths and families’ woes all bottled up in bizarre fashion. A great historical spoof from a highly imaginative writer."
-- Tess Allegra, http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org...
June 11, 2012
Easily the best dramatic fiction I've read in a long while! Filled with a curious and captivating cast of creatively constructed characters who shine brilliantly in the twisting and soul-fulfilling plot that is filled with such vivid imagery and victorian detail that the heart shakes. Truly an inspiring and wonderful book! Highly, HIGHLY recommended!!
November 24, 2008
light and fun but took a while to get through; not really a page-turner.
December 31, 2014
Lacked the magical realism elements that I loved so much in "Eating Mammals," but still full of rich imagery and compelling prose.
May 31, 2012
Not for me. This just wasn't a book I could get into and I never got very far.
March 18, 2013
Try as I might...I just couldn't get into it.
May 5, 2008
Kind of like reading Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Interesting- and different!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews