Girl on a Bar Stool: 09/27/09

Girl on a Bar Stool started as a request to write a handbook on brand marketing. It ends up being a novel about vodka, religion, politics and sacrifice.

Adam Melton, the first person narrator takes us through his rise and fall. An average career as an ad exec for a vodka distributor has the career making moment when he meets Yasemin. She ends up being the model for his latest campaign but her participation comes with a hefty price.

Yasemin is no ordinary femme fatale; she's an angel. She gives Melton a better ad campaign than he could ever dream of and pushes him into a political career, telling him he has a destiny to save the world.

Adam Melton's sudden switch to politics and his success at it reminds me most of the television miniseries of the 1990s that were inspired by the novel 0006176909?House of Cards by Michael Dobbs. The B00009MGGI?miniseries trilogy (for a total of twelve episodes) featured a devious character who also quickly rises to power named Francis Urquhart.

Now Urquhart's rise and fall was all self made and pure evil. Adam Melton is actually a sympathetic character for the most part. He is perhaps too trusting of his angel and too willing to play along as he rises in power.

Of the two Tim Roux novels I had the pleasure to review, Girl on a Bar Stool was by far my favorite. It's a nice mixture of social satire and metaphysics.

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