Review by Booklist Review
Houghton was a young boy working in his father's Mississippi drugstore when he met his future wife, Annabelle. The two went on to not only raise four children but become one of the most well-known families of their time, thanks to Houghton's invention of Panola Cola, the country's first major soft drink company. Now an aging Houghton must decide whom to leave the company to. His eldest son, Montgomery, is an aspiring politician who never recovered from the horrors of WWI. Twins Ramsey and Lance are too busy competing with each other to consider taking on the responsibilities of running a company. And youngest son Harold, who is caring and kind, is hampered by a mental disability. Wright's (Play Pretty Blues, 2013) sweeping novel introduces an ambitious and passionate family building their lives and creating a dynasty over the course of a century. Wonderfully written, with fascinating, deeply memorable characters, American Pop is a vivid reminder of the power of a family to build an empire and move a nation.--Carol Gladstein Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Wright (Play Pretty Blues) follows three generations of a wealthy family riddled with secrets in his sweeping yet intimate historical novel. Houghton Forster launches a commercial empire in early 20th-century Mississippi with his soft drink, PanCola. Its success puts immense pressure on the family to live up to its station. Houghton's oldest son, Montgomery, returns from WWI to pursue a political career but harbors emotional wounds over the death of his male lover. The second son, Harold, outlives the clan and runs a ramshackle museum after the family's fortune fails. The youngest are fraternal twins: thoughtlessly cruel Lance, and Ramsey, who pursues an affair in Paris with singer Josephine Baker after her disappointing marriage to a Hollywood executive. The final generation includes Montgomery's ambitious daughter Imogene, who uses a wheelchair due to polio and attempts to salvage the company after her brother's poor business choices. Wright's nonchronological zipping between characters creates a complex, engaging mosaic leavened with wry humor. Real and imagined scholarly citations provide context, and a subplot about the soda's secret ingredient offers intrigue. This smart and tragic exploration of American history will make a splash among fans of family sagas. Agent: Eve Attermann, WME Entertainment. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
"Southerners are only as good as their ability to tell a story," declares this novel's unnamed third-person narrator. Judging by the effervescent and poignant multigenerational family drama as recounted here, Mississippi-born Wright is one excellent Southerner. As in his award-winning debut novel, Play Pretty Blues, the author uses an unorthodox nonlinear narrative style to trace the rise and fall of the Forsters and their soft drink empire, the Panola Cola Company. Founder Houghton Forster, the son of Scottish immigrants, and his Southern aristocratic wife, Annabel, raise their children with the expectation that they, too, will make their mark upon the world. However, eldest son Montgomery is haunted by his lost love, Nicholas is killed during the Great War, fraternal twins Ramsey and Lance show little interest in their inheritance, and gentle Harold is slowed by a mental disability. Ultimately, Houghton's decision to leave Panola Cola to spoiled grandson Nicholas leads to ruin. VERDICT Wealthy white families in decline are a staple of Southern fiction, but Wright spins this familiar tale with a fresh exuberance and flair that will engage fans of Nancy Lemann and James Wilcox despite one-too-many narrative digressions and some skimpy characterization. [See Prepub Alert, 7/31/18.]-Wilda Williams, New York © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The rise and fall of a fictitious cola empire and its founding family.Perhaps the only throughline in Wright's (Play Pretty Blues, 2013) chaotic second novel is the mystery of the secret ingredient in Panola Cola, aka PanCola, formulated by Mississippi pharmacist Houghton Forster, the only son of Scottish immigrants. Unfortunately, no one knows who, among three generations of PanCola heirs and heiresses, inherited PanCola's exact recipe. The significance of "the secret" is gainsaid, however, by factories' continuing to churn out a product which holds its own against Coke and Pepsi. Houghton's offspringMontgomery, the oldest; daughter Ramsey; her fraternal twin, Lance; and Harold, who seems to be on the autism spectrumhave little to do with the family business. Only Monty's children, Imogene, disabled by polio, and her reckless brother, Nicholas, have ambitions for PanCola, but for some reason, inexplicable to both her and readers, Imogene is disinherited. From the 19th century through the 1970s, the Forsters gain and lose a fortune. The "Malediction" accidentally called down by the Forster matriarch, Fiona, on her descendants is mostly treated as an afterthought until, suddenly and belatedly, it's not. The plot's discontinuity is aggravated by an insouciant disregard for chronology. An arch, omniscient authorial voice dips into multiple psyches, and here Wright almost succeeds in holding our interest. Ramsey and her exploits in Paris as the lover of Josephine Baker, Lance's unfortunate introduction to hunting, Montgomery's gay love affair as a teenage World War I doughboy and his forays into politics, and Harold, the bellwether child of family trauma, all engage us emotionally, as do minor characters like the family factotum and fixer, Branchwater. The language is replete with irony and recognizably Southern witticisms, e.g., "Sarahwas constantly saying she was at her wit's end' despite the obvious lack of a beginning." Flashbacks and flash-forwards abound, and often, on the verge of a crucial revelation, the action digresses along some anecdotal path, never to return.Too much exposition is not the problem hereit's too little relevant information. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
