BJ's Reviews > The Pairing

I don’t like wine. I spent years, in my twenties, trying to taste what everyone else seemed to taste, but though every once in a while it almost clicked—a very dry red wine on a very good Valentine’s day date with a very beautiful Valentine’s day date, a spicy-smooth bottle of Madeira (though does fortified wine even count?)—ultimately, I was wasting my time. The problem, I finally decided, is that when other people drink wine, they taste something more than overwhelming bitterness. Something subtle. Something much less like salad dressing. I say all this, because if I had even just a mild appreciation for wine, it is possible that I would have enjoyed this novel far more. It feels like an important caveat.

Casey McQuiston is a great writer. They have a way of taking a sentence where you don’t expect it that often makes me smile and sometimes makes me laugh out loud; a way of getting inside their characters so that they feel larger than life, but also like someone you used to know. And thank God they do, because frankly, just about the only thing this book has going for it is that Casey McQuiston wrote it. Two gorgeous, rich, basically insufferable 28-year-old kids on a three week luxury food and wine tour across Southern Europe. I think I would like them if they were my friends—their enthusiasm, their humor—but they're not my friends, they're characters in a novel, and I spent way too much of this book skimming endless pretentious conversations about wine and pastries and wishing they would, you know, shut up.

We see almost nothing of France, Spain, or Italy you wouldn’t see from a tour bus. Which, to be fair, is absolutely logical and realistic—but compared to what an observant author is capable of showing of a place, also utterly impoverished. When, in the second half, one of our leads starts reflexively quoting Rilke, it is almost a relief—at last, something like substantive engagement with human culture, a book actually read and loved and internalized, to enliven the never-ending parade of paintings and churches. That said, I settled in after a while, accepted the tour and novel for what they are: decadent, indulgent, shallow, capitalist, and basically realistic (if we set aside the ease with which threesomes seem to arrange themselves, at least).

No, the problem at the novel’s heart, for me, lies in the relationship, not the setting. Here, too, Casey McQuiston proves themself an exquisitely good author, equally adept at heartfelt conversations, unvoiced soliloquies, and raw, vulnerable, pleasurable sex (there’s a sex scene towards the end good enough to justify reading the book all on its own, honestly). But—and what follows could be construed as a spoiler, though I don’t think I ever really doubted it—our leads love each other on page one. They have always loved each other. They always will. Which means, in the novel, on the tour, they’re not falling in love, they’re miscommunicating. In three countries. By the end, I was more or less persuaded that their extraordinary sexual chemistry alone was grounds enough for marriage, but I spent much of the novel fending off the suspicion that they would really be better off if they just got over each other.

Four stars because almost everything I dislike about this book is contained in its premise, and honestly it’s so well executed on its own terms that I should probably be giving it five—but if I rated books based solely on how I feel about them in my heart, it might be closer to two.