"The Various Flavors of Coffee": Coffee serves as eye-opener in young poet's life

"The Various Flavors of Coffee"

by Anthony Capella

Bantam Dell, 560 pp., $22

It is London in the 1890s. Robert Wallis, an impoverished young poet living on his father's allowance, eats breakfast at a cafe. "[A] well-made cup of coffee is the proper beginning to an idle day," he comments to the waiter. "Its aroma is beguiling, its taste is sweet; yet it leaves behind only bitterness and regret. In that it resembles, surely, the pleasures of love." Samuel Pinker, a coffee merchant who has just entered the cafe, overhears the conversation and offers Wallis employment writing descriptions of coffee varieties for a company catalog. With an eye to paying off his debts, Wallis accepts the offer.

His first day on the job, he meets Emily, Pinker's daughter and secretary, and falls in love. Bright, capable and modern, Emily has strong opinions about women's rights, so lacking in contemporary society. She, too, is enamored of coffee and they work well together, but he's unsure of her feelings toward him.

Perhaps to avoid scandal, Pinker sends Wallis to North Africa to evaluate coffee plantations. Hoping to win Emily's hand in the future, Wallis sets off on his journey, filling his solitary days by writing long letters to her. Then, one day, Wallis discovers not only one of the finest coffees he's ever tasted, but also a beautiful, multilingual slave woman named Fikre. A connoisseur of coffee, she's also an expert in performing the local coffee-tasting ceremony. Wallis is smitten, begins a passionate affair with her and, finally, begins to forget Emily.

Circumstances demand that he return to his old job in London, where he meets with Emily again. He soon discovers that she's become ever more active in the women's suffrage movement despite considerable opposition from those around her. Wallis decides to lend a helping hand to Emily's cause and, in the process, his love for her rekindles.

Meanwhile, the coffee business is undergoing radical changes due to competition and mergers. Wallis must somehow gather all his powers to meet these challenges, or risk losing all.

Anthony Capella ("The Wedding Officer"), known for his food-themed novels, is once again on top of his game. This story is an eclectic brew of such diverse elements as the coffee trade, women's suffrage, foreign travel and slavery, and is spiced up with a dollop of exotic romance. At 500 pages, the book is overly long and populated with too many players, but clever plot twists and sumptuous prose make up for any deficiencies. Even a non-coffee drinker, such as this reader, is thoroughly entertained.