Flowers in the Metropol

Today, Amor Towles graced us with one of the most perfect books of the year - A Gentleman in Moscow.  It's my latest pick that you'll find in our September newsletter, available in finer bookstores everywhere - as long as they're ours - or of course online here.

I didn't think it possible for Mr. Towles to improve on his first novel.  That book, Rules of Civility, became a favorite of mine when it was released five years ago and not just because Mr. Towles has one of the best author signatures going. 

Seriously - authors?  Having a stamp - like that gorgeous red one, upper right - at hand to adorn your books when you sign them?  Genius move right there.  It of course helps when the book is brilliant, as Rules of Civility is, but the stamp doesn't hurt.

At all.


May we speak, for just a moment, about author signatures?  Some people don't care one way or the other.  I'm not some people.  I care a lot.  I have a book problem, that is actually a first edition problem, that is actually actually a signed first edition problem.  Here's the deal, scribes - if you want someone to commit hours, plural, to reading your book, then you can take a few moments to sign your book if someone asks.  If there are too many readers?  And it's going to take a while to sign each book?  Consider yourself lucky.  Very lucky.  Too often, big name writers can't be bothered to actually meet the public that has made them a Big Name Writer.  If they conduct a signing - of late they have fallen into the new habit of pre-signing their books.  This is what's known as an abomination.  Please - meet your readers.  Say hello.  Be gracious and offer them one second.  Or ten.  Remember - they're why you're a BNW.

Mr. Towles?  My apologies.  I didn't mean to interrupt the introduction of your drink with a screed.  But because you take such care when signing your books - care enough that you stamp them in addition to signing them - you put the issue in stark relief.

Anyway.  Sorry.  There's a drink coming, I promise.



Reading the novel in Russia certainly had its charms.

Where Rules of Civility was all New York highs and lows - beginning at the end, on the last day of 1937 - A Gentleman in Moscow is a different time, 1922, and of course a different place.  What both books share is an assured author who is able to put words on the page that are witty and graceful, who brings elegant characters to life but who isn't afraid to show the squalid motives we all possess. 

I propose a simple challenge:  pick up A Gentleman in Moscow.  Read the first three pages - a transcript of the Appearance Of Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov Before The Emergency Committee Of The People's Commissiarat For Internal Affairs.  If, after reading those pages, you don't want to keep going, drinks are on me.

I have a feeling no drinks will be on me.

Those first few pages should be dry, right?  A transcript of a courtroom proceeding?  But I can guarantee that given those pages, you'll want to follow the Count for more than the 400 pages we're given.  You'll want to follow the Count as the years accumulate outside the Hotel Metropol - where he's been sentenced to house arrest by the Bolsheviks.  And though the Count is forced to give up his suite of rooms for a cramped garret, he discovers more in his reduced circumstances than he could have discovered in his life before the revolution. 

I was lucky enough to hear Mr. Towles discuss A Gentleman in Moscow at a gathering in the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.  To hear the author talk about that grand hotel as being a sister to the Metropol - spaces that were created around the turn of the century to cater to a new, moneyed clientele, spaces that shared some of the same amenities to allow those travelers to feel at home on different continents, gave the book an extra heft.  Allowed us to feel the Metropol because we could see the Palace.

Where Mr. Towles had wonderfully created an entire country within the confines of a hotel, he allowed us a glimpse into the process that led to that creation.

There were flowers all over the Palace Hotel that July night, and those flowers evoked the reminiscences of the Count as he remembered a time when there were always flowers in the Metropol, as he remembered Fatima Federova, the hotel's florist.  She would have been the one to provide the magnificent arrangements in the lobby of the Metropol, more grand than the display in the Palace's lobby. 

Those memories gave me the name of the drink, and the Count himself gave me the body.  He enjoyed brandy, so I wanted to start there.  But then the story introduced me to Konstantin Konstaninovich, an old Greek.  A lender by trade.  Summoned by the Count to turn hidden gold into money more easily spent.  And since Greeks have their own brandy - Metaxa - I'd substitute it for the Count's own.

So, if you have the time - get yourself a copy of A Gentleman.  If you're lucky, maybe you'll see and hear Mr. Towles read from the book.  If  you ask him to sign your copy, you'll be in for a treat.  He'll give you a moment or two, probably he'll thank you for coming, and then, he just might stamp the book near his signature.

Those red, Russian rooftops don't come with the book - they're placed there by an author whose attention to detail shows in the book and on the signature page.

Again, please buy a copy of this Gentleman, take a seat, and let me arrange some Flowers in the Metropol for you.


Flowers in the Metropol 

 

1.5 oz Metaxa

.5 oz rose water

.25 oz simple syrup

.25 oz lemon juice

1 drop Aftelier Perfumes Rose Chef’s Essence

Rose-petal ice sphere

Stir all - except the sphere - with ice.  Strain over the sphere.

Jay McInerney, Rudyard Kipling, & Carrie Starr

When Jay McInerney's Bright, Precious Days was released this month, my only regret was that I wasn't creating cocktails for novels as earnestly in 2006 as I am now.  In '06, I was lucky enough to host Mr. McInerney in my store, but I didn't have a cocktail to toast him with, a cocktail to celebrate the release of The Good Life.

Regrets?  I've had a few, and like I said, that's one.

While I wasn't able to have the privilege of Mr. McInerney's presence in the store this go around, I do have a cocktail, the Carrie Starr. The drink's genesis was a scene in the book where two couples find themselves in a secret restaurant in New York - secret like speakeasies were when they first came back on the scene; think New York's PDT or San Francisco's Bourbon and Branch.

So, Russell and Corrine (last seen in The Good Life) are on a double date, and some of the foursome are more adventurous eaters than others.  It is, after all, New York, and shirako is on the menu, so if you're the one feeling adventurous and if you've ever had a hankering for fish sperm, then you simply have to find yourself a secret restaurant that'll prepare it for you.

One of the cocktails on the menu that night was the Rudyard Kipling.  This is an East meets West drink - bourbon mixed with Umeshu, a Japanese plum liqueur.  Kipling, in The Ballad of East and West, wrote that the two would never meet (as they do in this drink).  His poem begins and ends with:

0h, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

I'm not often presented with a cocktail to play with inside the pages of the books I'm reading, so I jumped at the chance to twiddle with this one.  I don't know Mr. McInerney personally (if you do, please ask!), and wasn't able to determine if the drink is one he concocted or if it came from some fabulous New York joint - so I'll just say the inspiration was his and I messed with it, absolving Mr. McInerney of all blame.

Messing with it meant leaving out the bourbon and using gin.  Kipling, born in British India, was quite the Englishman and what finer English liquor is there than gin?  Gin, though, seems in this setting to make the drink more feminine than it was with the bourbon, so I thought it was better to name it not for Kipling, but for his wife, Carrie Starr.

So, please, go get the book, mix yourself a drink, and enjoy.

Carrie Starr

 2 oz. gin

.5 oz Umeshu

2 dashes plum bitters

Ume (Asian Plum) peel for garnish

Line a chilled cocktail glass with the ume peel.  Stir the gin and Umeshu with ice.  Strain into the glass.  Dash with the bitters.

Chris Cleave's Everyone Brave is Forgiven

Because this post is more self-serving than most, I must first implore you - if time is of the essence, skip this and just go and purchase Everyone Brave is Forgiven, the new novel by Chris Cleave that was released today.

I'm not joking - just go.  These words will be here when you get back.

Ok - this then is for those who already have the book in their hands.  Good on you.

Every vocation has its perks.  Bookselling is no different.  Each day, new books come in the door.  Each day, new authors and old are vying for attention - which, of course, if you're a reader, would be heard as a little shout from heaven.

The only potential problem is the sheer weight of the words.  Was it Coleridge who was supposed to have been the last person to have read every book available to him?  Impossible now, of course - and during any week in a bookstore one can feel - sometimes - the burden.  There simply aren't enough hours.  It's like having the barkeep from The Waste Land interrupt your day with HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.

I know it's time.  And I know there's never enough of it.  I know there are thousands of books I'll never get to - so deciding what to read can itself become burdensome.

Ok, ok, if you're not a reader, you don't understand.  But if you're not a reader the only reason you're here is for the booze, and I'll get to that, I promise.

Because so much constantly vies for our attention - family, friends, work, music, movies, status updates - publishers sometimes go out of their way to grab you by the lapels.  Buttons will arrive with books.  We're sent pens, flashlights, sunglasses (hint to publishers - chocolate always works).

We've gotten a pie.  That was a good one.  Heck, once I was sent some booze.  God bless Michael Chabon's PR team.

We're always receiving letters.  Testimonials from the editor who picked up a book that arrived over the transom and was then up until three in the morning because the submission was so good.  The brief notes explaining that even though we might not usually pick up a book in a particular genre, we should crack open this one because it's so special.

The only problem with the letters again has something to do with volume.  I would love - love - to be able to read each book where an editor or publisher took the time to write a pitch.

*cue the violins*

It's just that there are so many.  Books and letters.

So many.

*let music fade*

Publishers try their tricks.  We get letters with our names at the top - as if they're written to us, like something from Publishers Clearing House.  They're not, of course, how could they be?  Like last September when I received a package from Marysue Rucci.  She happens to be Vice President and Editor-In-Chief of Simon & Schuster.  It was an advance copy of Chris Cleave's Not-Yet-Released novel.  Lucky me, he happens to be a favorite author of mine.  Have you read Little Bee?  Incendiary?  Gold?

Go do that.  I'll be right here.

So - I saw the "Dear Nick" at the top of her letter, poking out of the book, just under the S & S logo, and I thought, Wouldn't that be nice!

But then I saw other pages - a long author's note and something handwritten on Chris Cleave letterhead.  That second note - I thought it was done up like some junk mail companies do, using faux handwriting to make you think that a person wrote the letter, when of course they didn't - haven't I already said, How could they?

At this point I'm thinking - what an extravagant ruse, especially since no arm-twisting is necessary when it comes to a new novel by Mr. Cleave.  But then I saw a mention of my blog in the fake letter, and that's when I turned the letter over and noticed some of the ink had bled through the page.  I felt the bumps on the underside where the pen had made indentations...

I went back to the letter from Ms. Rucci, and it wasn't quite what I thought it was.  She explained that she could wax on about the powerful novel she had sent me, but instead she was passing on a note from Mr. Cleave.  And then she signed off with her thanks.

This was, to quote Monty Python, something completely different.

Mr. Cleave's note was warm and funny.  He let me know that his first novel was titled Tequila Mockingbird and that he was honoring me by not including it.  He hoped I might have time to read his latest and he too signed off.

Cheers.

I do not often receive letters from Editors-In-Chief or from authors I admire, and I'm easily flattered, so to receive both in the same package...

I immediately set to reading.  One worry I had was, What if I didn't like it?  To quote my nine-year-old, Awkward.

But did I mention that the author was Chris Cleave? And that I shouldn't have worried?

When I began reading, it was like I was in a movie theater and someone dimmed the lights.  All distractions went away, hidden by the dark that descended, and suddenly I was on Mont-Choisi, skiing down the slope with Mary North, finally given a good reason to be rid of finishing school.  It's September of 1939, and Ms. North and I will soon be rushing to London.  Lovely Mary North who signed up via telegraph with the War Office 45 minutes after hostilities were declared.

Then I would meet Tom Shaw, mouth full of blackberries, commanding the little people of London to learn - but this commandment would be given to an empty room because the schoolchildren of the great city had all but abandoned it.  Then on to his flatmate, Alistair Heath, stuffing Julius Caesar full of newspaper.

Caesar, the poor bloke, was their dearly departed - and formerly randy - cat.  They had hoped to have him stuffed so that he would still be inside their hallowed halls.  With the outbreak of war, though, he had been returned, unfilled, from the taxidermist

While thinking about where those newspapers were going, could I smell the tobacco from Alistair's pipe?  Or the blackberries that Tom set to simmering in a pot to make jam?  Later, when Mary went out into London after the first bombs had been dropped, and she described the bejeweled streets covered in the broken glass from building after building - could I see the sparkling shards?  Feel them underfoot?

Yes to all that.

Yes because Mr. Cleave is a masterful storyteller who takes you by the hand and leads you on an adventure - a grim, funny, harrowing and thoughtful adventure.  Please - go buy it, because that's all you're getting from me.  You need to experience it yourself.

The trick, then, was to create a drink for the book.  If you've been here before you know that I like to find the cocktail inside the novel.  The ingredients are there, just waiting to be chosen.  But in his letter Mr. Cleave had pointed out one problem - drinks were hard to come by during the Blitz.

Still, if you knew people, or knew where to go (hello, Ritz), even this could be dealt with.  I also wanted to have the drink reflect some of those amazing characters that Mr. Cleave brought to life.  Mary - though she fought it - was decidedly upper-crust.  Tom, not so much.  This wasn't Pygmalion, though, not Eliza Doolittle vs. 'enry 'iggins, so gin just might be induced to play nicely with some champagne.

Do me a favor - don't knock it until you've tried it.  Because what I wanted to do was also give it a taste of something thrown together.  'Fancy a drink?'  What do you have?  'Let's see...'   The gin and champagne fit that bill nicely, but those two might need a wee something to round it out - which is when I remembered the blackberries.

And in the same way that Ms. North saw the beautifully bejeweled streets of a bombed London, in the same way that Mr. Cleave created a gorgeous testament to the lives lost and the loves won from the remains of that awful war, I wanted to mix up something a little English, something a little bit lovely.

Cheers.

Bejeweled Street 

1.5 oz. Plymouth Gin

.5 tsp. Blackberry jam
Champagne

Add gin and jam to an ice-filled shaker. Shake. Strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top with the bubbly. Garnish with a dollop of jam. Silver spoon optional.

An Hour of Glamour - The Summer Before the War

Did you love Major Pettigrew's Last Stand?  You did if you read it - so if you haven't, just go.  Go do that.  When you come back, I'll have a drink waiting for you in celebration of Helen Simonson's followup to that lovely novel.

Hour of Glamour

 

1.5 oz gin

.75 oz. Madeira
.25 oz Maraschino Liqueur
1 oz tonic
Cherry for garnish

Rinse a chilled rocks glass with the Maraschino Liquer.  Discard any excess.  Add ice.  Stir the gin, Madeira, and tonic with ice until cold.  Strain into the glass.  Garnish with cherry.

Ms. Simonson's next book, due in little more than a month, is another gorgeous tale set in England - this time just before the Great War.  When you're making a cocktail for a book - because you do that, too, right?  I mustn't be the only one?  But when you do, you hope that the author conveniently gives you a name for the drink within the book's pages.  

The Summer Before the War doesn't disappoint on this, or any, score.  In response to one cousin wanting to take another cousin down a peg, their Aunt Agatha is patient, explaining that the inflated sense of self that Daniel has developed since he'd been spending time with a friend from the aristocracy will soon be punctured because that's the way of things.  Why not, she insists, let him have his hour of glamour?  And if that isn't a perfect name for a cocktail, I don't know what is.  

Because Aunt Agatha usually enjoys a glass of Madeira in the evening, I began there.  It would be a compliment to gin, naturally, because there isn't a drink that says England more than gin.  Everything else adds to a cool sipper that's floral, earthy and herbaceous.  Cheers!

 

The Opposite of Death? This Too Shall Pass

When I picked up Milena Busquets' novel, This Too Shall Pass, I was charmed immediately.  Charmed by our narrator, Blanca.  Blanca who's struggling with an age in her life that she's never been able to imagine.

Thirty she had envisioned.  Sixty, too.  Even eighty.  At eighty she had pictured herself drinking whisky with her friends.  But forty?  Fifty?  Those ages had been shrouded, full of mystery - and suddenly she finds herself there with no sense of how she arrived.

I don't feel that way about fifty.  No, of course not.  Not at all. 

(cue the Talking Heads)

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house
With a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself
Well...How did I get here?

So I was immediately smitten by Blanca.  But then?  Then things got a little steamy.  Actually, things got quite a little bit hot.  Blanca has - voracious appetites.  The only thing to do in that situation is to make a drink.

She named this one herself when she mused that the opposite of death is life, is sex.  Great - so I had the name.  Then I just had to wait for the drink - and in Blanca's world, Gin & Tonics soon arrived.

Many of them.

That was too easy, just a G&T, but then I was handed a conversation that Blanca has with one of her ex's (she only has two, it's not like she's Zsa Zsa Gabor).  Blanca and Guillem are talking about apples, and she says that the only kind she likes are the ones Snow White eats - Guillem's organic apples are home to too many worms and there's nothing sexy about a worm in your apple.

So for Blanca, I made a G&T, but I replaced the Gin with Applejack.  I also added some Burlesque Bitters because, well, I thought she'd like them.  She'd laugh at the company's description of their bitters as a spicy little tart who likes to flirt.  If she likes anything, Blanca likes to flirt.

The Opposite of Death

1.5 oz Laird's Applejack

4 oz tonic

1 stopper Bittermens Burlesque Bitters

Apple for garnish

Stir all with ice.  Strain into an ice-filled collins glass.  Garnish with apple slice.

A Fraction of Sherry for Ethan Canin

Ethan Canin.  I can't stress enough how much he shaped the ideas that the young version of me - Nick 1.0 - began to have about writing, about fiction.

About what works and what doesn't.  About what's important, what'll last.

His first collection of stories, Emperor of the Air, was released right after I graduated from high school.  Even if the lights were flashing in my rear view mirror, I wouldn't be able to make out the colors from 1984 - they're too far back, too much traffic is between the now and the then.

But - I easily remember being floored by those stories.  It was one of the most perfect collections I had ever read - and still is one of the best ever written.  

I get to meet him tonight at a cocktail party with a glorious handful of authors.  The best perk about being a bookseller?  It's the occasional but always wonderful parties that are sometimes held to celebrate an author and that author's work.

Because, of course, we should celebrate authors more than we do.

The even better news is that Mr. Canin has a new novel coming out in just a few days - A Doubter's Alamanac.

It's phenomenal.  And - it was easy to make a cocktail for it because there’s plenty of drinking going on.  At the start, sherry and bourbon flow freely, so that provided an easy pairing.

Then there’s the brilliant mathematician, Milo Andret, who looms over the novel’s pages.  Since he was as good at souring relationships as he was at solving theorems, I rounded out the equation with a startlingly tart kumquat.

A Fraction of Sherry

1.5 oz bourbon 

.75 oz dry sherry
.25 oz simple syrup
1 kumquat

Muddle the kumquat with everything.  Shake with ice.  Finely strain into a chilled glass.  Slice a kumquat to garnish.

A High Mountain for Yann Martel

Yann Martel has written an exquisite novel, The High Mountains of Portugal, that called out for an exquisite concoction that would begin and end in Portugal in much the same way that the novel does.  While you can find the book in the finest shops, you can find the book and the drink in the Books Inc. newsletter and online.

Port would have been the easy choice for his drink, but it didn't make the cocktail sing like it should, so I used Madeira instead and the Portuguese fortified wine proved robust enough to play in a glass with the whiskey.  I used rye instead of sweeter bourbon because the Madeira is plenty sweet.

Martel's novel begins with a 1904 Renault that's packed to the gunnels for a trip into the title's High Mountains, so I wanted to pack his drink as full of flavors as the Renault was.  Chocolate and orange bitters mingled easily with the Madeira, and a cinnamon-stick garnish added a wonderful bouquet.

I wrapped the cinnamon stick with an orange twist to echo the orange bitters - and because it looked pretty.  Pretty never hurt a drink.  Cheers!

A High Mountain

2 oz. Rye Whiskey

1 oz. Madeira

1 dash orange bitters

1 dash chocolate bitters

Cinnamon stick and orange twist for garnish

Stir all drink ingredients with ice. Strain into an ice-filled glass. Twist orange peel around cinnamon stick for garnish.