Martini: A Memoir is both a memoir and a meditation on the martini by the Australian and Miles Franklin Literary Award winning author Frank Moorhouse. Moorhouse was a guest at international literary festivals in Hong Kong and Shanghai, presenting talks about the martini, in 2003. Michelle Garnaut, the founder of the Shanghai International Literary Festival, invited him to speak at the inaugural festival that year. Synopsis Moorhouse uses a selective memoir to frame his meandering (but thorough) meditation on the martini. Or, perhaps, he uses a widely digressive discussion of the martini to frame a selective memoir. His exchanges, by email, or more often in person at various New York bars, with his friend and martini-aficionado, Voltz, form a thread on which both the memoir and the martini-appreciation hang. Every aspect of the martini is discussed, from the size and temperature of the glass, through the types of gin (or vodka) that should be used, to the types of wood best used for the sticks on which the salt-pickled olives are skewered. How much vermouth? (From upside-down mainly-vermouth, to Luis Bunuel's 'it is sufficient for sunlight to pass through the vermouth bottle into the gin'. What to do with the olive pits? (Voltz and Moorhouse both favour dropping them into a pocket). The book is full of humour, with characters as diverse as Winston Churchill, Malcolm Fraser, Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker making appearances. Episodes from Moorhouse’s colourful life, from childhood, and his time at Wollongong tech, to maturity, including his bisexual relationships and his writer-in-residence positions, often frame moments in the development of his appreciation for the drink. He recounts a particularly touching story of finding that a woman he had read about in his researches in Geneva for Dark Palace (and who indeed was a model for the central character, Edith Campbell Berry) was still living at an advanced age in upstate New York. He visits her, and she asks him 'you must tell me about myself', and he is delighted to find that she, too, loves a martini. In the chapter titled 'The Thirteen Awarenesses', Moorhouse takes the reader through the stages of enjoying a martini, comparing it to the ritual of the Japanese tea ceremony. It concludes with a reflection on life: If you are in the mood you may want to leave space also to glance at the other imps that swim in every martini