Synopsis
Meet Kathryn Borel, bon vivant and undutiful daughter. Now meet her father, Philippe, former chef, eccentric genius, and wine aficionado extraordinaire. Kathryn is like her father in every way but one: she's totally ignorant when it comes to wine. And although Philippe has devoted untold parenting hours to delivering impassioned oenological orations, she has managed to remain unenlightened. But after an accident and a death, Kathryn realizes that by shutting herself off to her father's greatest passion, she will never really know him. Accordingly, she proposes a drunken father-daughter road trip. Corked is the uncensored account of their tour through the great wine regions of France. Uproarious, poignant, painfully introspective, and filled with cunning little details about wine, this is a book for any reader who has sought a connection with a complex family member or wanted to overcome the paralyzing terror of being faced with a restaurant wine list.
Publishers Weekly
In 2005, 20-something Canadian Borel and her 60-something French-born hotelier father set out by car on a days-long French wine “safari.” Borel, who works at the Canadian Broadcasting Company, desired a deeper connection to her father, but was also seeking escape from both the aftermath of a recent breakup and slightly older memories of a fatal car accident for which she bore responsibility. The trip's early stages were strained by travel sickness and father-daughter bickering, and as the abundantly detailed tour improved and progressed, the shadow of her father and his mortality fell ever sharper, if sometimes self-consciously. Borel's father emerges as a storytelling curmudgeon with a penchant for public humiliations who instinctively retreats into inappropriate humor; the narrator, meanwhile, comes across as emotional if not downright maudlin, and candid if not completely narcissistic. She lacks her father's knowledge of wine, a shortfall she covers with seemingly childish behavior. But then her wine-tasting experiences lead Borel to genuine breakthroughs, making her more confident and, in effect, bringing her relationship with her father to a breaking point. The narrative ends in a reconciliation that, like the whole book, is refreshingly unsentimental, grounded, perhaps to an extreme, in flashes of candor and humor. (Feb.)