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Writing a review of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, by Paul Torday, is an exhilarating experience. I get to talk about the brilliance of the novel and the hopeless mediocrity that surrounds us.

Indeed, it’s interesting to give you a quick briefing of how I discovered The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce.

I saw the book at the local library. As I sometimes do with authors I haven’t read before, I took a quick look at Goodreads reviews. The average rating of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce is (at the time of this review) 3.49/5. The thing is, I have the experience to know that if a book (or a film) features bad ratings by the social masses, it might mean it’s actually good.

Taking a look at one or two reviews, I felt certain it was a book I wanted to read. People complained that there was no resolution to the story. Others gave the book 2 stars because… the protagonist was in denial.

The level of ignorance and mediocrity is appalling, when it comes to unsophisticated readers.

And so, let’s see what I thought about Torday’s novel. This is a review of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce. It’s also another chance for me to express my dismay at the social mediocrity that has enthralled the world. Ironically enough, the two processes are metatextually related as you will see.

Review of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce: Genre, Plot, Narrative

I’ll be extremely brief about genre and plot. It’s a literary-fiction novel, talking about the human experience. The plot? A guy, Wilberforce, going through life feeling empty and uninspired, discovers a new world when he accidentally enters a semi-abandoned wine shop. But reality eventually catches up with him.

It sounds simple; dull, even. If you’re into impossible plots, dragons, or tall-dark-and-handsome sheikhs wooing independent-but-willing women, The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce is not for you.

On the other hand, if you’re seeking a deep exploration of brilliance versus mediocrity, meaning versus security, reason versus loyalty, all peppered with a symbolic, magnificently intelligent commentary on class divisions, the hypocrisy of people you know, and the intricate, metatextually charged processes of writing and creating…

… then congratulations. You have found the masterpiece you’ve long been waiting for.

Narrative Meaning: More than a Sum of Its Parts

The narrative structure of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce is unorthodox (though by no means unprecedented). Essentially, the story begins with the protagonist’s final descent into madness and demise.

The outcome remains vague, left to the reader’s imagination, but the very point is that the ending of someone in Wilberforce’s position is predetermined. More still, the entire narrative seems to suggest that the endings of all of us are equally predictable, unless we did something about it.

To properly realize that, the reader needs to go through a narrative journey. The novel unwraps a reality going backward in time, each event acquiring importance and meaning (or having its original one shattered) as the narrative progresses.

The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce is an incredibly multi-layered novel, offering a very deep nexus of meanings, all pertaining to its central themes. It’s more than a sum of its parts, because the very presence of these layers creates additional meaning.

Review of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce: Characters

Any self-respecting novel of literary fiction should pay close attention to characters. Characters are, basically, almost all there is in such works. And The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce does not disappoint.

Wilberforce, the protagonist, occupies most of the novel – which unfolds from his perspective. A narrative focalization such as this one facilitates the introduction of doubt and narrative ambiguity, an important aspect of the book.

The rest of the characters exist solely to serve Wilberforce’s journey to discovery, though not in a way you might think. In a sense, the narrative is not unlike a dream, where every character is a product of one’s subconscious.

The workaholic, highly ambitious business partner; the naive wife; the exciting new friends; last but certainly not least, the owner of the wine shop.

All these characters exist simultaneously in different worlds: Sometimes they are what they seem. Sometimes they are what Wilberforce wants them to be. And then there are hints (here’s looking at you, reader), that they might be facets of how Wilberforce would like to see himself as.

Review of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce: General Impression

To say that I liked The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce would be a major understatement. In a world of paralyzing mediocrity and, frankly, appalling stupidity, there comes an author who doesn’t care about the usual rules of writing, the way his protagonist doesn’t care about the social, artificial rules of living.

About the only thing I think could have been better is the slight tendency to overexplain things near the end of the narrative. I’m willing to bet, it wasn’t the author who decided that but rather an agent, an editor, a publisher, or some other imbecile who, having no clue about art, persuaded the author to make sure “the audience gets it”.

If there are readers who need to be taken by the hand to understand a masterpiece such as this one, they don’t deserve it.

Ironically enough, this element (just like the Goodreads reviews I mentioned about, complaining about the protagonist being… in denial) form a metatextual facet of the central topic, brilliance versus mediocrity.

The Here-and-Now of Experiencing

Once you open a bottle of wine, Wilberforce hears, you need to drink it immediately, because it’s dying. It’s all or nothing, and it’s all now. The metaphor is very evident for a man wasting his life on things he hates (and hopefully as evident to as least some readers).

But drinking a bottle of wine all at once can be dangerous, as Wilberforce discovers. Can the same be true about life?

The narrative structure seems to taunt the reader, at the same time challenging them to provide the answer themselves. What begins as a clear case (no pun intended) for the dangers of living here-and-now, eventually morphs.

Perhaps there are things scarier than dying, the narrative seems to suggest. Perhaps, compared to dying, not having lived is much worse.