...a wonderfully engaging memoir of both her father, Clifton Fadiman, and of what it was like to grow up in a highly bookish and privileged household ... By recording both her past experiences and her current thoughts about those experiences, she keeps The Wine Lover’s Daughter consistently absorbing and, once begun, you will be hard-pressed to stop reading, even though the book should probably be savored like a grand cru rather than guzzled down like cheap beer. Either way, though, you’re in for a good time ... Anne Fadiman’s prose, like a proper gentleman’s suit, is beautifully tailored without drawing attention to itself ... [a] clear-eyed and loving memoir.
...a deliciously rich, well-balanced portrait ... But Fadiman’s memoir uncorks much more than a remembrance of drinks past or a daughter’s filial intoxication. By allowing her memories to ripen over the many years since her father’s death in 1999, the result is a superbly evolved, less tannic pour ... like her father, Fadiman has that rare ability to wear her erudition lightly. And what he said about wine also applies to The Wine Lover’s Daughter: it is a delectable ode to cultivation and civilization.
...an illuminating and nuanced case study in connoisseurship that probes the dazzling hedonism and gnawing anxieties that fuel an obsession with fermented grape juice ... Fadiman, a gifted writer with an instinct for brilliant detail, conveys the blissful suspense of uncorking a new bottle when she writes, with characteristic feeling, that when her father first tasted a wine, 'one could feel the entire world aligning with his aspirations.' She also teases out the darker desires behind oenophiles’ thirst, and investigates their psychology with an honesty that can be rare among wine lovers themselves ... Yet The Wine Lover’s Daughter occasionally feels short on another quality that drew Clifton to his prized French reds: acid, the sourness that adds complexity to both wine and life.
In this crisp, scintillating, amusing, and affecting memoir, Anne incisively and lovingly portrays her brilliantand vital father and brings into fresh focus the dynamic world of twentieth-century books and America’s discovery of wine.
The Wine Lover’s Daughter is alert to the complications of cultural assimilation—in this case, her father’s tortured struggle to outrun his childhood as the son of poor immigrant Jews...The elder Fadiman’s alienation from his ancestry, a recurring theme of the book, is painful to read about ... The Wine Lover’s Daughter emerges as an elegy not only for Fadiman but also for a way of life.
In her absorbing new memoir, The Wine Lover’s Daughter, the award-winning author and essayist takes on perhaps her most personal and challenging subject to date – namely, her late father and their relationship ... Alternating between the lives of the two principals, Fadiman explores her father’s divergent selves – the diminished child, aspiring WASP and famed literary maven – with grace and humor. She reflects on her own role as an 'oakling,' long eclipsed by her father’s shadow, and their naturally shifting balance over time ... The Wine Lover’s Daughter pays tribute to a man who enlivened language and literature for the better part of a century, until his death at the age of 95 ...a study of class and family; of anti-Semitism and immigrants as outsiders; and of the pursuit of excellence. Above all, it’s a story of wine as conduit and holy grail, as the centerpiece of a life ...daughter’s memoir decants a narrative that’s spirited, full-bodied and complex.
...a beautifully composed memoir of her father's life, viewed through the lens of his oenophilia ... While she does not shrink from Clifton's flaws--a condescending attitude toward women, profound insecurity--this portrait is deeply loving. Fadiman seeks to reveal a complex and multi-talented man, and to celebrate his contributions to literature. She also seeks contact with a father she clearly misses ... The Wine Lover's Daughter is a beautiful remembrance and a loving and well-deserved tribute to a literary figure--and to the joy of imbibing.
...she’s back with The Wine Lover’s Daughter, a lively, moving, beautifully written memoir of the author’s relationship with her father, told through the story of his unfettered passion for wine...and her own difficult-to-cop-to, lifelong apathy for it ... a book about how much our tastes — and our freedom to indulge or express them — define who we are. It’s also a book about self-doubt ...as the title suggests, as much about the child as it is about the parent ... At the risk of sounding trite, The Wine Lover’s Daughter functions, in part, as a decanter into which the author has poured a very fine vintage of (her father’s beloved) Premier Cru Bordeaux, a bottle laid down in the cellar for decades, forgotten even, then rediscovered, uncorked, savored.
As with a good bottle of wine, the experience of reading The Wine Lover’s Daughter deepens as the book unfolds … Fadiman’s memoir explores what it means to see, and what it means to lose the ability. In addition, it offers many pleasures: layers of bibliophilia, from children’s literature to Shakespeare, the strange habits of supertasters, pages of vino-notation … The Wine Lover’s Daughter, preoccupied as it is with art, literature, and taste, seems especially poignant.
Clifton Fadiman had two paramount passions: savoring the best wines and obliterating his Jewishness ... Like so many other first-generation American Jews, he saw his cultural heritage as an impediment—even a reproach—to the refined, upper-class WASP life he aspired to. Although clearly a doting daughter, Anne Fadiman is not an uncritical one as she examines her relationship with her father in The Wine Lover’s Daughter ... Anne Fadiman points out in great detail her father’s sexism and snobbery and marvels... Much of her chronicle is given over to her father’s informed obsession with wines and her attempts — ultimately unsuccessful — to become a wine enthusiast herself.
In The Wine Lover's Daughter, Anne Fadiman examines –– with all her characteristic wit and feeling –– her relationship with her father, Clifton Fadiman, a renowned literary critic, editor and radio host whose greatest love was wine ...traces the arc of a man’s infatuation from the glass of cheap Graves he drank in Paris in 1927...to the wines that sustained him in his last years, when he was blind but still buoyed, as always, by hedonism ... Wine is the spine of this touching memoir; the life and character of Fadiman’s father, along with her relationship with him and her own less ardent relationship with wine, are the flesh ...a poignant exploration of love, ambition, class, family and the pleasures of the palate by one of our finest essayists.
... Fadiman’s wonderful memoir examines herself, her father, her relationship with her father, wine, books, family, and much more ... Those familiar with the author’s essays will recognize her polymath mind and tangential style, and those unfamiliar will find it delightful to encounter for the first time. How she manages to fit her own life, her father’s life, her marriage, a primer on wine, the scientific study of taste, and many other subjects into such a slim volume is mind-boggling, something this reviewer is still trying to comprehend ...fascinating book with something to interest anyone; a pure reading pleasure.
In limning her father, Fadiman also lays a gradual accretion of detail about herself, but she is careful never to eclipse his (regrettably) diminished star. Reading this daughter's graceful, often melodious billet-doux to her father is not unlike imbibing several equally felicitous glasses of wine, their salutary effects leaving one pleasantly sated.
