The Various Flavours of Coffee

Written by Anthony Capella

Narrated by Jonathan Aris

It is 1895. Robert Wallis, would-be poet, bohemian and impoverished dandy, accepts a commission from coffee merchant Samuel Pinker to categorise the different tastes of coffee - and encounters Pinker's free-thinking daughters, Philomenia, Ada and Emily. As romance blossoms with Emily, Robert realises that the muse and marriage may not be incompatible after all. Sent to Abyssinia to make his fortune in the coffee trade, he becomes obsessed with slave girl, Fikre. He decides to use the money he has saved to buy her from her owner - a decision that will change not only his own life, but the lives of the three Pinker sisters...

• Language: English
• Publisher: W. F. Howes Ltd
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781407449944

Anthony Capella

Anthony Capella was born in Uganda in 1962. He was educated at St Peter's College, Oxford, where he graduated with a First in English Literature. He is the bestselling author of The Food of Love (a Richard and Judy Summer Read), The Wedding Officer, and The Various Flavours of Coffee. His novels have been translated into 23 languages and have been bestsellers in many different countries.

Reviews for The Various Flavours of Coffee

[c.vick · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

from: B.A.B.A.E.L.Let's talk a little bit about my new favorite author, Anthony Capella. I think I'm in love and I want to tell the world!I don't read as many modern authors of adult fiction. Raised on a hearty diet of classics (I am an English major), there's a lot about the modern novel that I just don't like. I'm capable of grumbling so much about "books today" that I fear I'll soon be huddled in a corner with my cane asking, "those kids" to "get off my lawn," you know? Anyway, I digress. In some sort of effort to "make it new," something I'm not against in principle, it seems like a lot of authors have decided to dispense with that pesky element known as the plot.I've read so many books that just sort of meander along, going nowhere, hoping you will love their cool characters and nifty metaphors enough to forget that there is no actual substance there. Weirdly, it works, sometimes. But then I when I get my hand on a really good story, one with a beginning, a middle and an end, the main thing I feel when I get done? "Ahhhhhh... that was satisfying." There's just nothing like a good story, is there?And that's what Capella writes. Good stories. In some of the most basic ways (boy meets girl, boy loses girl... etc.) they aren't earth-shaking, but as every reader should know, we've been telling the same stories over and over and over again since time began. It's what you can weave into that story that counts. Capella knows how to weave an entrancing tale.I picked up The Various Flavors of Coffee because I liked the cover. No really. That's how I pick out fully half of what I read. It's a good cover and an intriguing title. I maintain that judging a book by its cover isn't a half bad idea. And in this case, the story more than lived up to it's cover.Set in the late 1800s, The Various Flavors of Coffee follows Robert Wallis, a young would-be poet and definite fop. Very fashionable and full of epigrams, Wallis has, for all his put-on intellectualism, also just failed out of Oxford. And considering his father is threatening to cut him off financially, he's really beginning to worry. After all, how will he afford his wardrobe?Lucky for him a Samuel Pinker, coffee merchant, is looking for a writer to help him write a guide to coffee. The idea is to standardize the vocabulary surrounding taste, color, etc, so that the buyers in coffee-growing countries know which coffees to send back to the merchants in England. It may not be a literary journal, but it pays, and it comes with the help of the bewitching Emily Pinker.Willis quickly falls in love with the spunky, feminist Emily, and is even given her hand in marriage. Provided, that is, that he goes to Africa for Mr. Pinker starts a coffee plantation, and earns his fortune. And so off to Africa he goes, where he also goes and little native, and gets his heart broken in many ways.Meanwhile, back in England, the woman suffrage movement is heating up and you can guess who is right in the thick of things-- Emily! Yeah, this book covers a lot of stuff; colonization, women's rights, industrialization, capitalism, love, romance... it's epic.Ah, what a story!Meanwhile, Capella is the master of making food (or coffee in this case) a great foil for the characters and the plot. Capella, you will not be surprised to know, is a food writer. But it isn't some foodie gimmick. Foods really become integral to the story -- almost a character in and of itself.Another thing Capella manages to consistently capture is the quirkiness of life. That borderline absurdity we've all got in our lives and barely notice because its been with us so long. The werid relative. The odd living situation. You know what I mean. He's able capture such things for the great little moments of humor they provide. His books really run the gamut. They are romantic, sad, sweet, funny, tragic, and everything in between. You know, like real life.I adored The Various Flavors of Coffee so much, I got my hands on another Capella book, The Wedding Officer, as soon as possible. I'll spare you two reviews, but suffice to say I loved it. I've got his first novel, The Food of Love sitting on my desk right now. It's calling me. "Read me," it says, "Read me now!" Well, I must obey....(Follow-up: Sadly, I'm a little mixed on The Food of Love. It was cute, but very certainly chick-lit. I enjoyed the Cyrano parallels, but thought the whole was a little dull. However, it wasn't so bad that I won't absolutely rush out to buy the next thing Capella writes -- especially if it is historical fiction!)

[bookconcierge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“Just as good coffee might smell of – perhaps – leather and tobacco and honeysuckle, all at once, so love is a mixture of any number of feelings: infatuation, idealism, tenderness, lust, the urge to protect or be protected, the desire to ravish, comradeship, friendship, aesthetic appreciation, and a thousand more besides. …
The laugh of a woman, the scent of a child, the making of a coffee – these are the various flavors of love.”

Robert Wallis is an aesthete who wishes to write poetry. Samuel Pinker is the owner of a coffee business who recognizes a particular talent in Wallis and hires him to compile a guide to the various flavors of coffee, thus beginning a long relationship between the Pinker family and Wallis.

It would not be a Capella novel without an element of love and romance, and this book certainly has that. However, I thought Capella lost track of the main romantic thread. He flirted with the reader, much as the two young people flirted, then seemed to completely lose interest. I quickly grew irritated by Wallis’s continued immature and hedonistic behavior. As a result, I became much more interested in the history of the coffee trade, and the behind-the-scenes machinations of the powerful men who sought to control the world market. Then Capella brings back the love interest. I had greatly enjoyed his debut novel, The Food of Love (a retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac), but this novel isn’t quite as flavorful.

[haloma_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book I loved from the very first beginning. It is witty, imaginative , adventurous and much more. Of course it has joined together popular themes like slavery, women's rights, 'fair' trade but it didn't disturb me at all. I think the book was very well written with lots of witty dialogues. The way he describes the flavours of a good cup of coffee makes it impossible to read the book without a cup to enjoy! I finished the book in the shortes feasible time and enjoyed every minute I spent reading it dreading the fact the book would come finally to it's end. I immediately ordered Mr. Capella's other book 'the wedding officer'!

[pmaurer_11 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed learning about the cupping of coffee, but didn't care for the sexual descriptions included in the book. Time ran out before I read the whole thing. Probably won't check it out again to finish.

[thetometraveller · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"A well made cup of coffee is the proper beginning to an idle day. 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.....Although in this case, it seems to taste of nothing much except mud. With, perhaps, a faint aftertaste of rotten apricots."With these words Robert Wallis seals his fate. Not that it didn't need to be sealed. After having been expelled from Oxford (too much partying, no studying) and cut off by his father, Robert is living in London on credit from various tradesmen. He is the very picture of a dandy, dressing in the most fashionable manner, writing marginal poetry by day and visiting local brothels by night. A dissolute young man who is nevertheless endearing from the very first page.While sitting in a cafe one morning his remark is overheard by coffee merchant Samuel Pinker. Mr. Pinker wants to develop a reference manual to describe the tastes & smells in the various coffee beans that he imports. He needs someone with a discerning palate and the vocabulary necessary to complete the task. He offers Robert the very last thing that he wants, employment. But even Robert realizes that he will not be able to maintain his lifestyle with no income, so he reluctantly accepts.The dreadful dullness of employment is greatly reduced when Robert meets his assistant. Mr. Pinker's lovely daughter, Emily, serves as secretary and partner in the task. Robert, of course, is attracted to her (and her father's wealth). He feels that he is a wonderful catch, a view not shared by Mr. Pinker. In order to win her hand he is given a mission. A five year trek to Africa, to plant and grow a crop of the best kind of coffee available. Obviously this kind of job is not to Robert's taste but again, he sees that his life has left him few options and he agrees to go.Africa will profoundly change Robert in ways that he cannot begin to imagine. The man who returns to London has learned hard lessons and survived harrowing experiences. The years have changed London and its inhabitants, as well. When he returns he will have to rebuild his life and try create a future for himself. Mr. Capella has written a fantastic historical novel. He brilliantly describes London at the end of the nineteenth century with all of its wonderful depth, from the glamorous upper class drawing rooms to the seedy, poverty stricken streets. Then he takes us to the dusty plains and steamy jungles of Africa and introduces us to the native people, showing us their struggle to maintain their way of life in the face of outsiders in search of wealth and land. It is a rich, evocative, compelling story and I loved it.

[jammies_4 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Too much poorly written smut, too little suffragism, but a good amount of coffee.

[nitestar_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have read all of Anthony's previous books and this book is quite different. From the opening sentence, I knew I was going to fall in love with this book - I am also somewhat obsessed with the subject of a good cup of coffee myself - so this book took on a bit of a personal slant for me :)We are introduced to Robert Wallis, poet extraordinaire (at least in his own mind) who, although quite impoverished, still manages to present the image of a snob and a finicky coffee drinker - which will lead him to a strange offer - working in the coffee trade.Over the course of the novel, we will get to live Wallis' ups and downs for the next 20 years - in which he will make great discoveries both in his professional life, but more importantly in his personal life. As the reader, we will bear silent witness to Willis' growth as a human being and as a man.For me, what worked best is the novel is the opportunity for the reader to live Willis' life and to experience what he experiences. Indeed, we start off actively disliking this young man - who will grow into a fine and kind man.I don't usually like storylines that are set in the 1800's, but Capella tells this story in such rich detail that you can actually feel yourself sitting at the small cafe in England - sitting a cup of coffee. His descriptions of the actual coffees and the beans are so real that it just made me want to go out there and discover the best cup of coffee.This book was a great accompaniement to a strong, bold cup of coffee - delish!

[punxsygal · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In 1895, aspiring poet Robert Wallis, having previously been sent down from Oxford, is sitting in a cafe drinking a cup of coffee. Find the coffee not to his liking he complains to the waiter that the "coffee tastes rusty". Thus starts this somewhat bawdy tale of love, voting rights for women and coffee. It shows the many weaknesses of a man who is trying to figure out what is right in life. The descriptive terms for coffee at the begnning of each chapter make you want to pause to make your own cup to savor while reading.

[countrylife_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It was a wonderful book, it was a horrible book. The luscious descriptions of The Various Flavors of Coffee - their tastes and aromas – how beautifully it flowed. But the author's device of applying the same sorts of descriptives to the various flavors of various women's various body parts was a huge, HUGE, turnoff for me. This is a fictional story of one young man's journey from a womanizing, collegiate failure to a steady business hand and learning to love one woman, all entwined within a setting of the coffee industry, featuring London and parts of Africa, and beginning in 1896. I loved reading about the history of coffee, in the bits of threads about its cultivation, transport, sale, blending, and roasting. It was both interesting and well written. Portions of the book that revolved around the main characters and their relationships with one another were less well done. Particularly, the main character's development into a more mature being felt like a shallow transition. Definitely, the good parts of the book were about coffee. In his acknowledgments, the author mentions the books from which he's drawn to build his story. Some of those books were used as sources for the many epigraphs prefacing the sections of the book, and I enjoyed those mentions of coffee terms. For instance, this epigraph: ”Spicy” - this aroma is typical of the odour of sweet spices such as cloves, cinnamon and allspice. Tasters are cautioned not to use this term to describe the aroma of savoury spices such as pepper, oregano and Indian spices. -International Coffee Organisation, The Sensory Evaluation of Coffee. Had he stuck to the coffee storyline, this would have been a five-star book. But with all the erotica thrown in, I cannot recommend it to other sensitive readers. 2-1/2 stars.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Attracted by both an interesting title and a beautiful cover, I had high expectations for The Various Flavours of Coffee by Anthony Capella as I had so enjoyed The Wedding Officer previously. Unfortunately I was in for a letdown. At slightly over 700 pages, this was a big mess of a story that dealt with love, sex, coffee, slavery, Africa, the suffragette movement, business and ultimately loss. The main character, who at the beginning of the book warns you that you won’t like him, starts off as a dilettante fop who would rather spend his time in a whorehouse than learning to be a responsible grown up. By the end of the book he has come full circle, but by that time I hardly cared.Don’t get me wrong, there were parts of this book that were very readable and interesting. It just went off on too many tangents and he seemed to write himself into a corner more than once. He used sex and earthy descriptions to advance the story, which after a couple of times got rather silly and boring. If he had perhaps narrowed his focus to one or two of the above mentioned subjects he may have produced a more cohesive story.What this author did produce is a rather readable, well researched historical soap opera that was a little too full of drama and florid language to be taken seriously. Too bad, as I think this could have been an extraordinary story.

[wyvernfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A romance from the man's viewpoint. It's a bit predictable in places but this story of Robert Wallis, a struggling poet who accepts a commission from a coffee merchant, Pinker, to help compose a vocabulary of coffee, a way of describing the tastes, smells and other aspects of coffee. Along with him Pinker's Daughter Emily work on this and find themselves attracted.Pinker decides to send Robert off to see if he can succeed and if Emily will "get over" her attraction to him. He sends him to manage a coffee plantation in Africa. There Robert meets Fikre, a beautyful black slave, and falls in love. But things become more complicated and Robert finds himself in difficulty.This is quite an interesting story, if a little predictable, the characters occasionally seem to be going through the motions without any real feeling of depth. I liked it but didn't love it, it's nearly a 4* read but not quite for me.

[richardderus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rating: 3.875* of fiveThe Book Report: The book description says:From the internationally bestselling author of The Wedding Officer comes a novel whose stunning blend of exotic adventure and erotic passion will intoxicate every reader who tastes of its remarkable delights.When a woman gives a man coffee, it is a way of showing her desire.—Abyssinian proverbIt was a cup of coffee that changed Robert Wallis’s life—and a cup of very bad coffee at that. The impoverished poet is sitting in a London coffeehouse contemplating an uncertain future when he meets Samuel Pinker. The owner of Castle Coffee offers Wallace the very last thing a struggling young artiste in fin de siècle England could possibly want: a job.But the job Wallis accepts—employing his palate and talent for words to compose a “vocabulary of coffee” based on its many subtle and elusive flavors—is only the beginning of an extraordinary adventure in which Wallis will experience the dizzying heights of desire and the excruciating pain of loss. As Wallis finds himself falling hopelessly in love with his coworker, Pinker’s spirited suffragette daughter Emily, both will discover that you cannot awaken one set of senses without affecting all the others.Their love is tested when Wallis is dispatched on a journey to North Africa in search of the legendary Arab mocca. As he travels to coffee’s fabled birthplace—and learns the fiercely guarded secrets of the trade—Wallis meets Fikre, the defiant, seductive slave of a powerful coffee merchant, who serves him in the traditional Abyssinian coffee ceremony. And when Fikre dares to slip Wallis a single coffee bean, the mysteries of coffee and forbidden passion intermingle…and combine to change history and fate. My Review: Um. Well. Uh. I have a problem here. I started reading one book, thinking I was getting one kind of thing, and I ended up getting rather another, and along the way I oscillated between irked and amused often enough that I thought I was on some sort of story-magneto, swinging from pole to pole.There's a good deal of energy in this tale, no doubt about that. It's got a swinging pace, it's got an emotional charge from its characters' absurdities and failings, and it's set at a time of radical change which is always good for a sense of urgency.The irked pole on the mageto, for me, was narrator Robert himself. His studied, dandyish pose of Oscar Wildean epigrammatic speech made me homicidal. That the conceit of the book is a tale told in retrospect prevented me from hurling the damn thing aside, as the narrator-Robert shared my amused, then annoyed response to character-Robert, is both a good and a bad thing. I got the sense that narrator-Robert and I were in cahoots, smiling with impatient indulgence on the emotional excesses and self-delusions of Those Young People. It also popped me out of the story a good deal, at least until I'd made my peace with its narrative drag on the pace.Also on the irked pole of the swing was the romance Robert clearly has with himself, and extends to Emily, a Modern Girl (in the 1897 meaning of those words) working (!) in her father's firm before entering into marriage. As Robert is hired to create a coffee vocabulary with Emily's help, the story being told about coffee seemed to suffer from the superposition of A Romance. That the romance was doomed (not a spoiler, Robert says so) is no surprise whatsoever. No one's first love is his last. More to the point, Robert's constant use of prostitutes isn't gonna fly with a Modern Girl, and one can always rest assured that the secret one least wants revealed will be known by those one least wants to know it at the worst, most embarrassing moment. In fiction as in life. So the doomed-ness of the romance was crystal clear and left me waiting for the other shoe to drop, rather than being a sad case of readerly anticipation followed by a wistful sense of opportunity lost. It might be an inevitability of the retrospective structure used here. I would have thought, however, that the author would have expended more effort in making this Grand Passion more immediate, no matter the structure.But the real annoyance to me was the occasional interpolation of present-tense bits into this review of the life and times of Robert, when the PoV shifts to others. If these aren't Robert's memories, why are they here? So annoying to have the rules the author himself chose broken with such complete, unexplained violence. So. Annoying.But there were positive pole-swings, too, and really good ones. The author has narrator-Robert decrying the change from Victorian to Edwardian worlds, from hidden, gaslit Vices to unforgiving, electrically lit Morality...a point I found really interesting. The backdrop of Africa was also deeply felt and wonderfully evocative. I have no gauge to measure its accuracy, as I've never been to East Africa, but it felt wonderful and enfolding and right to me. The author, I will note, was born in Uganda. This makes me inclined to trust his evocation of place.But the main pleasure the book afforded me was coffee. The smell, the taste, the politics, the essence of the world in these pages is coffee. The vocabulary character-Robert develops with Emily, the first of its kind, is delightful. The descriptions of the coffees, their differences, their quirks, all superbly rendered and skillfully deployed to avoid both the dreaded info-dump and the (inexplicably, to me) less-dreaded light garnish or inadequate gilding of fact on a wodge of story that could be anywhere, anywhen, about anything and/or nothing.And while I've mentioned in positive terms the pace the author sets in the book, I can't overlook the sheer length of the opus. Over 500 pages. Oh dear. One hundred fewer, with the simple alteration of no annoying PoV switches, and I think this would have been a more exciting, more fully enfolding book.It's a good read that could have been excellent. *sigh*

[tadad_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In a nutshell, I was disappointed with this book, though it wasn't bad.It has the same writing style as his previous books: pleasant to read and fast paced. It has the same mixture of themes: a love of food, a good love story, a bit of action and some heated sex. It has even more plot twists and surprises than did they. What it doesn't have is likable characters. Bruno from The Food of Love was a lovable Cyrano and Laura a sexy object of desire. James from The Wedding Officer was an amiable everyman and Livia entrancing. Unfortunately, Mr. Robert Wallis from this story is a fairly callow, self-centered and rather unpleasant youth. Even the more mature version we have by the end of the book doesn't seem fundamentally different, just a bit less puppyish. As for the two objects-of-his-affection, I found neither of them that attractive.So, a well-written story populated by below-average characters. So, I give it a "passed-an-afternoon" to a "mild recommendation." I'll read his next one, hoping for something more like his first two.

[stonelaura · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This lively book is a wonderful combination of historic fiction -- covering turn-of-the century suffrage struggles in London, growth of the coffee industry, and the development of the commodities market -- and lusty romance. The beautiful cover art aptly reflects the sensuous nature of the book. Author Anthony Capella is described in his bio as “a lover of all things culinary,” and he revels in writing detailed descriptions of flavors, scents, sounds and sensations. The story begins in London where we meet the young foppish, spendthrift Robert Wallis. Due to his creative descriptions of a cup of coffee he becomes employed by coffee entrepreneur Samuel Pinker and his life becomes intertwined with the Pinker family. Ever susceptible to attractive women Wallis quickly falls for middle daughter Emily as they work to create the definitive vocabulary guide for the various flavors of coffee. Later Wallis travels to Ethiopia to start a new coffee plantation for Pinker and while there he falls for yet another beauty, this time of a darker nature both in appearance and personality. Certain predictable events take place but the exotic and sensuous details keep the story rolling along, including some rather amazing historically researched details about female hysteria cures. Years later, back in London a more mature Wallis again works for Pinker and Emily, who is now married to a conservative politician. Love, sex and politics all combine for a rollicking good story.