About the Book
The book that inspired the film of the same name, staring Paul Giamatti, Sideways is a beautifully crafted buddy novel full of "witty dialogue, and bags of well-crafted entertainment" (Yorkshire Times).
Sideways is the story of two friends--Miles and Jack--going away together for the last time to steep themselves in everything that makes it good to be young and single: Pinot, putting, and prowling bars. In the week before Jack plans to marry, the pair heads out from Los Angeles to the Santa Ynez Valley wine country. For Jack, the tasting tour is Seven Days to D-Day, his final stretch of freedom. For Miles--who has divorced his wife, is facing an uncertain career, and has lost his passion for living--the trip is a weeklong opportunity to evaluate his past, his future, and himself.
A raucous and surprising novel filled with wonderful details about wine, Sideways is also a thought-provoking and funny book about men, women, and human relationships.
About the Author :
Rex Pickett is a California-based screenwriter and author who is most well known for writing Sideways, the book that became one of the most critically acclaimed and highest-grossing comedy films in Hollywood history. The screenplay for the film was named one of the Top 100 Screenplays of All Time by the Writers Guild of America while the movie itself was nominated for five Oscars (winning Best Adapted Screenplay) and seven Golden Globe Awards (winning Best Screenplay and Best Picture). Pickett also wrote the script for the Oscar-winning Best Live Action Short My Mother Dreams the Satan's Disciples in New York, and his Sideways sequel Vertical won the Gold Medal for Popular Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The Rex Pickett Papers are in archives at Geisel Library on the campus of his alma mater, UCSD. Pickett resides in Del Mar, California.
Review :
"I'll never forget reading the manuscript for Sideways in a single sitting aboard an airplane. A confessional novel, it astonished me with its honesty, humor, and pathos in a setting as seductive as it gets. Upon landing, I sprinted to a pay phone to tell the right parties about the astonishing novel I'd just read--the novel that was to change my life."
-- "Alexander Payne, Oscar-winning director/cowriter of Sideways"
"This republication in hardcover of Rex Pickett's now famous first novel Sideways is indeed a cause for lifting a glass of the finest Pinot Noir in celebration. At once raucously funny, cringingly audacious, and acutely perceptive about male insecurities and midlife confusion, the book covers a wild week in California wine country where two guys go in search of wine, women, and that final song before life gets its grips on them. There is also a surprising amount of astute wine criticism layered into the dramatic roller coaster of events."
-- "Kirk Honeycutt, former chief film critic, the Hollywood Reporter"
"Forget the film and get lost in Rex Pickett's writing, which reads like John Kennedy Toole inhabited by the ghost of Falstaff. Sideways is a meditation on loneliness disguised as a rollicking yarn, and a hero's journey in which wine is both the temptress and the trial."
-- "Katherine Cole, author of Voodoo Vintners and executive producer and host of The Four Top podcast"
"Sideways in many ways is a genre breaker. What made it special is there was nothing like it before. Yes, it is picaresque and ribald, bursting with outrageousness and side-splitting humor, but at its core this very special novel possesses sweetness, wisdom, and most important, heart. I knew when I read it in manuscript form it would be a foundation for a great movie. Little did I realize it would grow into becoming a timeless classic, not just in the wine world, but in the annals of cinema as well."
-- "Angelo Pizzo, screenwriter of Hoosiers and Rudy"
"Sideways is one of those rarest of books: a story that became an instant hit and cult classic, with character journeys that resonated with the zeitgeist and remain poignant today."
-- "James Phelan, author of Patriot Act"
"It's about time Rex Pickett's Sideways is in hardcover. This funny, insightful, beautifully written, iconic book has delighted millions in its various incarnations as a novel, movie, play, and musical, and singlehandedly created an awareness for Pinot Noir that propelled that varietal to the forefront of American wines. But that notwithstanding, the true genius of the book is Pickett's writing and characters--clever, heartfelt, relatable, and totally enjoyable. If you've never read Sideways, you don't know what you're missing. It is as much a treat for your mind and mood as Pinot Noir is for your palate."
-- "Rick Bleiweiss, award-winning, bestselling author & Grammy-nominated record producer"
"Seldom--if ever--does a wine book break out of its niche to reach a worldwide audience. Sideways did, and then some. How? Why? Because it is more than simply a weeklong bibulous romp through California wine country. There's a deeply human story here too that everybody, wine lover or not, can relate to. Bravo, Rex Pickett. Bravo!"
-- "Raymond Blake, author of Côte d'Or and two-time Louis Roederer International Wine Writers' Awards finalist "
"By giving his narrator and chief protagonist a distinctive voice, Pickett immerses us in both the world of fine-wine appreciation and the intellectually and emotionally damaged world of its central character...Sideways delivers laughs, moments of real sadness, and insight, not to mention a cracking plot, witty dialogue, and bags of well-crafted entertainment."
-- "Paul Spalding-Mulcock, Yorkshire Times"
"A buddy novel in the cinematic vein of Swingers...Pickett plays the sex-and-the-single-man angle for all it's worth here...like Dharma Bums updated with metrosexual panache."
-- "Booklist"
"A lively debut...Pickett takes his readers on a jolly ride."
-- "Publishers Weekly"
"Skillful work about a friendship between two ultimately likable guys."
-- "Kirkus Reviews"
