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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Intoxicated
by John Barlow |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Fizz John Barlow’s
new novel, Intoxicated,
may provide cogent lessons for executives about market research, supply chain
management, and product marketing. Set in rural Victorian England, amid a
growing temperance movement, the novel presents the history of a fictional
carbonated beverage, Rhubarilla, made from rhubarb,
coca, and other secret ingredients. Barlow develops each member of the Brookes
family with precision, and offers Rodrigo Vermilion as a flamboyant entrepreneurial
counterpart to the other characters. Here’s an excerpt, from the end of
Chapter 2, pp. 41-45: They traveled on in
silence, moving into open grassland, a blind expanse of black in the
moonless night, flecked here and there with the orange spots of a distant
window. The horses’ hooves slowed as they began the long climb to Farnley. Tom was snoring with a
bubbling grunt, as if his body was full of lively fluids that had no
intention of going to sleep. The carriage’s two lanterns brought his face
into relief, the eyes sooty with late nights, the
chin thick and pale with blubber. Isaac watched him. All the hours I’ve
worked! he told himself, looking at his
twenty-one-year-old boy, swollen and satisfied next to him on the seat. All
the years of it! And look at him! Twenty-one, and a man of leisure! Look at the fun he’s
having whilst around him men toil like beasts just to stay alive. To be young
now! To be at it afresh, with the Empire so far extended, the world opened
up. How far I would go in your shoes, he whispered. How far! If only you’d
stuck it out in France, Tom! Made a start there. Look what you could’ve had! Investments? What is that? You could
have had a mill. A mill at
twenty-one... They came to the crown of
the hill. Robert brought the horses up to a trough outside the Woodcock Inn.
As the animals drank, he sat quite still, looking ahead. “Are you well, Robert?”
Isaac asked, thinking back to what the stableman had said earlier. A pause. Robert moved in
his seat and yanked at the sleeves of his overcoat. “Ah am,” he mumbled, in the
end. “Everything’s well, then?” “Ah’m
well enough.” “So everything’s well?”
Isaac said, again. “Ah nivva
said that!” He spun around, his eyes
ablaze, his lower lip quivering until it flapped against his gums, making a clack-clacking sound. But he said
nothing more. “Is there anything I can
do?” “Abaht
time summun did summat!”
Robert blurted out, his mouth distorted, his breath heavy and irregular. “‘Er on ‘er sickbed!” “Sickbed? Who, Sarah? Is
Sarah ill?” “Aye, she is. An’ none on
us allowed to tell yer.” Isaac, breathless with
confusion, looked at his snoring son. He shook him, gently at first, but then
more violently, Tom’s head thumping hard into the wall of the carriage until
his eyelids prized themselves apart. “Is this true, Tom? Tom!” “What? What is it, uh?” “Is Mother ill?” “Who? M …
oh, that.
It’s nothing serious, I don’t—” “‘Appen
not when theewere up ‘ome
last, it weren’t!” There was a hateful fury in
Robert’s voice. Tom rose to grab his throat, but his father pushed him back
down into his seat with such force that the carriage rocked on its springs. By the time Tom had got his
breath back, they were speeding down the valley side at a gallop. He cowered
in the corner, as far away from his father as he could, taking swigs from his
flask of brandy, remembering now that it was four or five weeks at least
since he was last at Moorlands. They were at the valley
bottom in three or four minutes, then up the other side, on through Drighlington, crossing the Dewsbury Road without noticing
that it was there, the loud rattle of their progress a warning to others on
the road, who pulled aside and watched them speed by. Over the brow of the
next hill they charged, then down again towards Birkenshaw,
but cutting off onto Moor Lane, down, down the treacherous drop to Gomersal, so fast that the wheels of the carriage lifted
as it coursed left and right on the uneven surface. From her seat at the kitchen table Sarah now
directed things, despite her fatigue. What had always been a strong,
fun-loving voice was now no more than a wavering rasp, a tired struggle to
push the words out; Sarah Brookes, who had given up everything to come and
live at Moorlands, who for thirty-five years had hardly ever left her rural
paradise in Gomersal, and to whom the house meant
more than life itself; she was now reduced to this, to giving orders as
others cooked supper. The pudding had been
salvaged, and stood in the cracked bowl ready to be turned out. From the oven
a leg of mutton had been retrieved, its coat of fat singed black in places,
the flesh beneath as moist and bloody as the day it was slaughtered. But the
potatoes were boiling correctly, and there was bread. The homecoming feast,
then, had been partly reclaimed. “It would be such a fine
thing if Tom came,” she said, her voice gaining some strength. Her face was sunken, the flesh close to the bone, and her breath
betrayed the aching, phlegmy state of her lungs.
Yet she was animated by the thought of her elder son. “If only he would
come!” “Oh yes! How fine to see
him! What a fine thing that would be!” George said as he sliced a loaf of
bread. “When was he here last?”
she asked herself, out loud. “Like Isaac when he was young. Just the same.
Work, always work.” George put all his anger
into the destruction of the bread. He huffed with frustration, and slices as
thick as Bibles fell from the loaf. “Is Tom coming, do you
know?” she said, lifting her head. He threw down the knife,
and in doing so caught his thumb, slitting open the soft flesh on the inside
of the hand. The wound, an inch long, winked at him as the blood dribbled
out, running into his palm... The cut
is Tom’s, he told himself, and the
blood is hers. . . For
over a month the life had been draining away from her, a little more each
day. And every day it was harder to stay calm, just he and May there in the
house, to see her like this ... Where
is Tom? Where is Father? Sarah, meanwhile, had
remembered something or other. Something about Tom and George, the story
about the rhubarb tops, perhaps. She tried to tell it, but her laughter
caused her to gasp, and the words got caught up in her shallow breath, which
suddenly became labored and desperate. George’s hand was throbbing
with pain. Overcome by what he and May had borne, there at home without Tom,
without his father, as his mother retreated from life (though she denied it),
he pulled his hand into his chest and cradled it, tears welling in his eyes,
voiceless words falling from his mouth. Sarah brought a hand to her
throat. She leant forwards in her seat and for a second was unable to
swallow. May rushed over and slapped her back, then rubbed it, then could not
think what else to do. She looked around, panicking, then took Sarah’s
shoulders and massaged them. Finally, Sarah lifted her hand and placed it on
one of May’s, as if to say that it had passed. At that moment May caught
sight of George, who was staggering like a man shot through the heart, his
white shirt bright with blood at the front. She screamed and ran around the
table to him, knocking the pudding to the ground. The cleft bowl shattered,
and the pudding itself, a lump of midbrown stodge, darkened at one end with burnt jam, came to a
rest on the stone floor. As she took hold of George and guided him towards a
chair, she stepped in the pudding, smearing it with her heel; it looked like
a small mammal flattened to death there, its dark blood and beating flesh
reduced to a sticky footprint. George fell back into the chair, his shirt
boasting an impressive splash of blood red. And Sarah, her breathing restored
to normal, also fell back in her chair, her face ashen and wasted,
her eyes watery. The room filled with a
violent whiz as the potatoes boiled over, leaping in a
frenzy, growling and bobbing in the water like impatient salmon. “Bon soir!” The door flew open. Isaac
appeared, framed against the night. But the bonhomie was contrived, and his
rosy face was rigid with fear. After dinner Isaac led Sarah upstairs. “Cramps? Infections?” he said as he steered her
across the landing and into their bedroom. “You mean you don’t know? What are
you taking?” “It’s nothing,” she
said quietly, as if trying to conceal the news of her illness from the very
walls of the house. “It’ll pass.” “Has John Heaton been?
I’ll send for him in the morning. Shall I go now? Shall I?” “There’s no need. Dr. Mussle has—” “But John’s the best
in She lay on the bed,
its sheets in a mess, hanging down to the floor. Isaac pulled them over her,
ordering them as best he could, fussing around, still
shaking his head. “I’ll send for him
tomorrow. No, no, I’ll go myself. First thing. I’ll . . .“ She took his hand, and
drew him closer. He sat on the edge of the bed, holding her hand tight, his
eyes glazed, his breathing as fast as hers. “Isaac,” she said, her
voice getting weaker, “I have everything I need here.” “But—” “Everything. I have
everything here that I want.” He barely heard her. “Everything.” “I’m going to retire,”
he said. She smiled, and
whispered: “Good” “I’m leaving “Good.” For some readers, Barlow’s writing is
an acquired taste, and while I gave a lower rating to his earlier collection
of novellas, Eating
Mammals, I found Intoxicated
to be absorbing, even somewhat addictive, and recommend it. Steve Hopkins,
September 25, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the October 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Intoxicated.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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