With a title like The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, you’d expect good fortune for Francis Wilberforce, instead of a tale of his downward spiral from a successful computer engineer at the peak of his career to an alcoholic shunned by society.

A Tale In Rewind

Paul Torday’s sophomore novel after Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. It is a first-person narrative written regressively and categorised into four years: 2006, 2004, 2003 and 2002.

When the story begins in 2006 we see 38-year-old Wilberforce, a jobless alcoholic-in-denial, with his life in shambles. His body is suffering the detrimental effects of cumulative intensive wine consumption and he’s close to death. Wilberforce’s misery is compounded by the mounting debts he incurred by squandering a few thousand pounds on a bottle of wine.

How did he end up in this sorry state? You’ll have to read the book from start to finish to find out.

However, UrbanWire read the book from the last chapter to the first just so you’ll understand the unfolding of events better.

Once upon a Lonely Savant

Back in 2002, despite being a young and wealthy businessman who had everything, Wilberforce was never happy with his workaholic life. As the only child under the loveless care of his foster parents: a frigid political history lecturer and his wife, he had a lonely childhood and poor social skills early in life, causing him interpersonal problems in adulthood.

Although Asperger’s Syndrome was never referred to directly in the book, Wilberforce is seen to possess many traits of an Aspie: his focussed interest in mathematics, awkward social behaviour and his deriving pleasure from cleaning and rearranging his belongings.

A New Lease of life

Wilberforce’s monotonous life began to get interesting when curiosity got the better of him and made him venture up the hillside where he discovered Caerlyon Hall, the residence of wine aficionado Francis Black. There, Wilberforce was introduced to the world of fine wines and met people who would open up opportunities previously foreign to him – the opportunities of friendship. All of a sudden, he began being invited to social events and meeting new people.

“Now, like dawn creeping through the drawn curtains of a darkened room, a pale light was beginning to grow, and as it grew it illuminated the austere and lonely nature of my world,” says Wilberforce in the book.

After the death of Francis Black, Wilberforce took over Black’s vast collection of vintage wine and settled at Caerlyon Hall with the fortune he acquired from the sale of his company, Wilberforce’s Software Solutions.

His money may have bought him near endless inebriety, but not true happiness. Within 4 years, Wilberforce’s wonderful life has gone topsy-turvy – he had undervalued his profitable enterprise when he sold it, betrayed his trusted friend-cum-business partner Andy and stole the girlfriend of another erstwhile friend. This combination of follies, whether blamed on his being piss drunk or not, doesn’t make the protagonist very likeable at all.

Flow of Story

The transition from one year to another is a bit disappointing, as the story isn’t recounted in retrospect. Rather, the chapters are standalone stories about the events that happened in those years of Wilberforce’s life, and seem almost randomly drawn out like 4 bottles of wine of varying vintage.

In a nutshell, The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce is a tragic socio-psychological thriller about someone failing to strike a balance between passion and livelihood. It’s a good read for anyone who enjoys probing into depths of the human psyche.

UrbanWire gives The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce is available at all major bookstores at $30.79