Snowden WrightRecensioni

Hard to follow all the timelines. Otherwise the plot lines are interesting.

I'm not leaving a star rating, because I don't like hurting authors' ratings like that, but I couldn't stand the prose. Too many characters were introduced too early on in this book, and the perspective kept hopping between them after only a paragraph or two. I had to bail.

This book about the fictional family that owned the equally fictional Panola Cola was an interesting idea, but it simply was a very hard book to finish. The author introduced way too many main characters and then proceeded to jump around from one year to another in no logical way whatsoever....
Don't get me wrong, I like books with "flashbacks" to earlier happenings, but usually those years are at least mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, make even the smallest amount of sense in the development of the story, and stay within that time for the length of the chapter. This book has many different time "zones" within each chapter... basically every paragraph is a different time and new characters are introduced without any idea of why they are even there and what year this new action is actually happening in!
It seems like the author had all these great ideas for developing the main characters and then simply wrote all of the thoughts down on post-it notes that he jumbled up in a "button bag" (thanks to "Project Runway "for the idea!) and simply typed them up as he pulled them out of the bag.½

Southern Gothic meets Dynasty in this family saga of a Mississippi family that founds Panola Cola, a Coca Cola-like drink complete with a secret ingredient. This is a family that definitely puts the fun into dysfunctional. Each of the family's children is flawed as are their children and we watch as the third generation runs the once mighty company into the ground. There's every kind of sexual sin you can imagine, there are people with physical and mental challenges, there is business duplicity, and then there are the normal vagueries of Southern Society with all the horrors attendant to Southern fiction. Pour yourself some pop, sit back and enjoy.

American Pop follows the fortunes of the Forster family. A family who built an empire on the back of Pan Cola in Panola County, Mississippi. By looking back and forth at the different generations of the family, rise and fall from power and the decline of their fortunes, the author weaves a tale of southern intrigue. I especially liked the fact that he was able to bring the story right up to the end of the dynasty where a long lost member of the clan gets the chance to look back on what the previous members did and how they suffered a decline of fortunes both in terms of business and family.

Snowden Wright has a talent for capturing the essence of the south, it positively oozes off every page, like Spanish moss blowing in the wind. He is skilled at blending fact and fiction in a way that keeps readers glued to the page and invested in the story. Plus, his descriptions of people and places leave no doubt about his skill as an accomplished writer.

Thanks to William Morrow for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
More reviews at: www.susannesbooklist.blogspot.com

American Pop
by Snowden Wright
2019
Harper Collins
3.5 / 5.0

A story of a family´s rise to wealth through a family owned corporation, Panola Cola of Mississippi. Sounds like a great story.
Like a soda that has lost its carbonation, this just pours flat. It is very s...l....o....w.. , to many characters, and a timeline that jumps around, sometimes within the same paragraph, and it makes overall story confusing, hard to follow and hard to get into,
This is not a bad bool, parts were very good, but the formatting had it hard to get engaged in the story. I did like Imogene and Ramsey, tho.

I'm ticked off. I liked the sounds of the blurb on the back of American Pop, and was quite happy to have won a copy thru Goodreads! But it was in my mind, a silly book. Too critical? maybe. The dynastic aspect regarding a soda company founding family had great potential but it fell flatter than a pancake. Not even a made for tv movie...tho MAYBE a made for tv soap opera??

A confusing, slightly boring read that I couldn't get into. For now, I have put the book aside and will try again at a later date.

I received an arc from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

A cautionary tale about the rise and fall of an American success story. What can go wrong when you get all you want. And don't talk to one another. Strong character development. Good interaction with the times of the story.½

It's unfortunate that a pretty intriguing story was marred by an awkward structure. The frequency (and seeming haphazardness) with which the narrative jumped between characters, time periods, and locations was exhausting, to the degree that I had to put the book away for a while because it hurt my brain to keep track of it all (I used the family tree extensively to help me keep track of who was who and when they lived.) It's too bad because I think I would have really enjoyed this if it had been a little less all over the place.½

Just like an icy glass of coke on a hot summer's day, American Pop by Snowden Wright was a refreshing break to the (slightly) more serious reading that I've been doing. This is a soap opera, a family saga where the story shifts quickly between the various family members, going back and forth in time, to tell the story of an American family's rise and fall.

When Houghton Forster developed a cola drink to serve in his father's pharmacy, he had no idea that it would be so popular. Houghton's a savvy businessman, though, and quickly takes advantage of the soda's popularity to make it a national product that becomes a standard beverage throughout the US and the world. Although firmly rooted at their home in Mississippi, the money that Panola Cola's success brings with it means that the next generation can move comfortably in high society, but not necessarily that they, or the following generation, have what it takes to keep the family business profitable.

Ranging from Panola County, Mississippi, to the battlefields of WWI France, to New York, to Hollywood and the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, American Pop also jumps back and forth through the timeline, so that a character's death is described before his first kiss, or a divorce before the marriage. It's a hard trick to pull off, juggling all the characters and their lives in a non-chronological way, but Wright pulls it off. The novel is pure entertainment that manages not to lose the story in all of that intricate structure.

I couldn’t handle the writing style, which was sometimes witty but was more often trying too hard to be witty. It also felt like the author wrote various scenes from the lives of the characters on index cards, tossed them into the air and then wrote the book in the order in which he randomly picked up the cards. Ultimately it was too much work for the limited pleasure I was getting from the book. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. It promised to be an interesting story about a family dynasty and their soda pop company. The story was interesting, and the characters were as well. But the author jumped around in the timeline so frequently, and so abruptly, and used a lot of foreshadowing as well, which made it a very confusing read.

American Pop by Snowden Wright is a highly recommended generational Southern family saga involving a cola dynasty.

The Forster family was the founder of the world’s first major soft-drink company, the Panola Cola Company, and this is the story of their rise and fall across a century. Houghton Forster is the founder who developed a delicious fizzy drink with a secret ingredient that helped create a cola dynasty in Mississippi and propelled him and his family to the upper reaches of society as the demand for PanCola swept across the country. Houghton and his wife, Annabelle, have four children, Montgomery, Harold, and twins Ramsey and Lance.

The chapters do not follow a chronological timeline, but jump from different periods in time. Two things are important to notice and use while reading: dates at the opening of chapters will set you in the right time period and the family tree at the beginning of the book will assist in identifying the characters until you know them more intimately. While all the characters may seem overwhelming at the beginning, if you stay with the novel the narrative will all start to make sense and fall into a timeline. It is rather essential to take it slow at first and learn who the characters are and where they fit into the family and the saga. Once you have a grip on who fits where and when, the narrative will move faster.

Along the way the novel Wright utilizes the technique of adding real and imagined historical quotes and mythical reports, blending fact and fiction which adds a depth to the narrative and makes the novel feel more like a biographical piece on a real family soda dynasty. I liked this touch quite a bit. As you were learning some of the private inside information about the lives of the family, there is the added dimension of the historical public view of the Foresters. The result is an intricate family saga with a complex mythology.

The quality of the writing is very good. The text is brimming with wit, irony, anecdotal digressions, and recognizably Southern sayings. At the same time there are also heartbreaking, tragic moments contrasting with incidences of great passion. Ultimately the characters are well-developed. At the end, you can almost believe that this Southern Gothic novel is a real biography of the first cola dynasty.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2019/02/american-pop.html

This book just did not work for me. It rambled too much, jumping all over. Very confusing. I would start on an interesting part and instead of staying with that portion of the story the author would again jump to either something in the past or something that would happen in the future. This could have been a really interesting story if it stayed on a lineal path. I was curious about why so many in the family died so young - and within mostly the same year. But I couldn't sort it all out.

Well, this is a DNF For me. I actually won this through librarything, but I couldn't get through it. I didn't like the set-up of the chapters.i didn't like the racist tone of the book. I'm so sad, because I was really looking forward to reading this novel. However, I just couldn't do it. Sigh.

Since American Pop started out with my least favorite part of the book, I'm going to start with what I liked least about reading it. (Only fair, right?)

What I Least Enjoyed about American Pop

The book immediately jumps into the lives of the ENTIRE Forster family during a New Year's Eve party in 1939. The Forster's have yet to fully embrace the downhill slide of the vast Panola Cola dynasty. Because of where the story begins, you've got a LOT of characters coming at you fast! I was only able to keep up with who's who by using the handy-dandy family tree at the beginning of the book. Without it, I'd have never been able to make it through the first chapter.

There's a lot of hopping around from one family member to another and also from one time period to another... So if you're distracted, you're going to get lost! If you're not paying attention, you're going to miss something! I got really confused on multiple occasions and was super close to DNFing it all together.

What I Most Enjoyed about American Pop

I gave it four stars, so American Pop has to have something going for it, right??

Funny, sweet, sad, ironic, uplifting & depressing are all words that could be used to describe American Pop. As my kids would say... it has ALL the feels.

The Forster family is pretty much the definition of dysfunctional:

The Forsters, like most southern families, typically had one of two intentions when conversing among themselves: to make each other laugh or to make each other bleed.

They all have secrets they unsuccessfully hide from both the world and each other. (Okay, maybe sometimes successfully? Semi-successfully, is that a thing?) There isn't a well-adjusted person in the bunch!

After a while, I actually got used to the way that the story goes from one snippet in the family's history to another, switching between family members and time periods.

Every emotion you can imagine, I felt it while reading this book. Love, hate, fear, excitement, sadness, grief, joy...it was a roller coaster of tears and laughing to the point of more tears!

One of my favorite story lines... You find out at the very start that one of the Pancola heirs, Houghton Forster, is in a strained marriage. Then you read the story of how he met his wife and it's so sweet and cute. They're so happy and you cannot figure out what in the world happened to change it all. I wept, cheered for, and admonished Houghton throughout the book.

The characters are all amazing, but one of my favorite's is Branchwater, the family fixer. His loyalty to the Forster's is beyond even their own and I just wanted to hug him so many times!

While I ended up loving American Pop, it's not going to be for everyone. I think it's definitely worth the read, despite the confusing beginning, but I'd caution anyone with triggers of violence or rape not to read it.

I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing's early reviewers program. This in no way influenced my review. Full review at https://jesscombs.com

Unable to finish. Will perhaps try again in a few years, but I'm far too into non-fiction right now.

Here we have a multigenerational family-run corporate dynasty story. Dysfunction? Check. Great Events of History? Check. Wacky characters? Closeted characters? Racism? Check, check, and check. There’s also so much foreshadowing I needed extra light. My least favorite TV episodes are the ones where X happens at the beginning and then there’s a title: “24 hours earlier...” This book has a ton of that, without the “X amount of time earlier” title. I knew the causes would be revealed eventually, but I wasn’t particularly motivated to do the work required (because I could guess, and I didn’t care). I did, however, read it all.½

This book frustrated me no end. It would have likely been a five star review were it not for the way the author chose to structure it. It had the makings of a great, engrossing family saga, the writing was wonderful, and the characters richly drawn and thoroughly engaging.

While I do prefer linear narratives, I have read and enjoyed novels that alternate between two and even three time periods. That is not what happens here. Instead, the story is constantly changing time periods, not just from chapter to chapter, but within chapters. Every few minutes, the reader is forced to recalibrate, as characters jump from being 50 to 5 with no context.

The irony is this was particularly frustrating for me because I loved the book so much -- I kept getting lost in the story/characters, but I was never allowed to go just with it.½

I love family sagas. I loved Jane Smiley's trilogy and Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham. I am now a fan of Snowden Wright's American Pop. Following three generations of a the first family of soda pop, we follow the Forster's through politics, marriages, heartaches, and disillusionment. And that is just the beginning. Although the story centers around a soda pop company that predates Pepsi or Coke, the story is much more about family, relationships, and the strength and destruction of both. I found Ms. Wright's writing style very easy to read and yet descriptive in a way that gave color to even the most bland parts of the story. Following the Forster family kept me engaged and entertained and I would read another book by Ms. Wright in a heartbeat.

This is an epic multi-generational family saga at its finest. From the family's humble beginnings of its immigrant patriarch to the eventual demise of the once-great family company, this sweeping story is lush with love and heartache, fortune and misfortune.

Reminiscent of Joyce Carol Oates's "We Were the Mulvaneys" (which I loved), we are brought into the inner folds of four generations of the fictional Forster family.

When Houghton Forster was a teenage boy helping out at his father's drug store, he accidentally invented a cola soda unlike anything ever seen before. Around the same time, he was courting the daughter of one of the most prominent families in town. Parlaying his invention into a popular business venture, he won the girl and created a prosperous business that would allow his future family decades of fame and fortune.

The first of its kind, Panola Cola - or PanCola - named after the southern town where it was invented, became a nationwide hit. As Houghton's family grew, so did the business. Their eldest son, Montgomery, has a life-altering secret that he keeps from his wife and family. The middle children, twins Lance and Ramsey, go through life as privileged spoiled brats who eventually grow up after years of cavorting without a care in the world. The youngest son, Harold - known as Haddie - has a mental handicap that renders him somewhat useless and therefore largely ignored by the rest of the family.

The book jumps around so much it can be very hard to follow. I referenced the family tree in the beginning of the book many times, even after I was familiar with how each family member related to the others. Jumping time frames as well as jumping character to character made for a confusing read. However, I also really liked how the story was told because it kept me on my toes and the chapters were short enough that there was always something happening that revealed itself to be relevant to the other tales within the book.

The family looms large within the story, of course, but so does the family business. One could almost believe that PanCola was truly the forefather of Coke and Pepsi. And one could almost believe that this was a biography told by a historian researching the Forster family. But it's not, and that's part of the beauty of this spectacular tale. I won this book from LibraryThing.

The book was fine; I even enjoyed it. The literary aspect was there, but it never merged into what I felt was a cohesive, compelling story. The legion of characters had so many fractured vignettes that it felt like a compendium of micro stories just out of focus that never resolved into a crisp overall big picture. At least, not to me. I did enjoy the setting of the "cola wars." I honestly finished it because I felt like I should (because this was a pre-published Advance Reader Copy that I received free of charge in exchange for this obviously unbiased review), not because it was particularly gripping. Still, I did enjoy several of the story lines individually. It seemed to me that the author picked a great setting, and had a good story to tell, but he just really wanted it to be a "sweeping family saga" so bad that it was forced. It needed to be either a lot longer, to give more about each character and really delve into more than just the highlights of their lives, or about half as long, with about a third fewer characters. But as I often do, I'm going to end by saying, hey, it's way better than I could write, and I'm sure it'll be plenty of other folks' cup of tea.

I really enjoyed this book. It gripped me from the start "American Pop" is the story of the fictional Forster family, the first family of the soft drink industry, whose lives went from poverty to fame, to tragedy, to nothing in 4 generations. It read like a movie, with the scenes changing from the 1940s to the trenches of WWI in France, to the early 1900s. Interesting Southern characters, full of all the secrets, tensions, and deceit like those in the fiction of Faulkner. Many plot twists, and the appearances of some real life personages like Josephine Baker, move the story along. I thought the author's prose was descriptive, and it held my attention to the very end.

Unfortunately, I was unable to finish this one. I got bored with both the plot and the characters. I gave up when I was a third of the way through.½