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mrsthrift's review against another edition
4.0
I really loved [b:Bee Season|251762|Bee Season|Myla Goldberg|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51im0CfE3TL._SL75_.jpg|2482870], so I was very pleased to listen to Wickett's Remedy on audio book as well. Maybe it's unfair to compare these two different stories solely because they share a maker, but Myla's name is what made me read this.
Initially the books seem like they could not be more dissimilar, although the style of their self-assured narrators indicate that they are related. Bee Season exists at the baffling intersection of Spelling Bees, Jewish mysticism, Hare Krishna recruitment, and mental illness. Wickett's Remedy makes its home at the junction of a young widow, a soda pop flavor, and the deadly raging influenza epidemic. Wickett doesn't hide major plot elements like Bee Season, nor does it hand you every character and facet of the story at once. It is many intersecting, overlapping layers that shift through time and narrators to create a ghostly story. Indeed, in the audio book version many of the sub-characters sound quite like ghosts as they recount their haunting memories.
I love books where the city is a character. Boston almost reaches out of these pages with her self-conscious history, shifting identities tied to neighborhoods and recent immigrants. The audio book has a lot of immigrant accents, clanging street noises, and enough bustle to make the story an immersion experience.
Another major character in this book is death. It's not like in Jennifer Egan's [b:A Visit from the Goon Squad|7331435|A Visit from the Goon Squad|Jennifer Egan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1290480318s/7331435.jpg|8975330], where the goon is time, but in Wickett's, death is all around. It is the major motivating factor of nearly every plot line. The death of a husband drives a poor widow back to her parents house. A soda mogul creates his industry heir from a mailroom clerk who shares a name with his dead son. Deaths of a neighbor, a brother, or a spouse define the moments where Something Happens in this book. The secondary narrators are ghosts talking from beyond the grave. There is so much death, loss, grief and sadness in this book, but it's not an especially sad or dramatic book. The plain, forthright language and earnest characters weave death seamlessly into life like a 50/50 cotton/poly blend.
Overall, this wasn't my most favorite book ever, for no particular reason, but it was highly enjoyable. Goldberg brings a cast of strong, developed characters that sometimes do inadvisable things because they feel like they should. Lydia is a capable, independent young woman who is entirely a product of her loved ones, her heritage and her community, as we all are. The story is set in an interesting place at a difficult time, and the humanity of it all shows through very close to the surface. And that, gentle reader, is entirely what I loved about Bee Season.
Also, though? Lydia's husband, Henry? he kind of creeped me out in a major way. Was that just me?
Initially the books seem like they could not be more dissimilar, although the style of their self-assured narrators indicate that they are related. Bee Season exists at the baffling intersection of Spelling Bees, Jewish mysticism, Hare Krishna recruitment, and mental illness. Wickett's Remedy makes its home at the junction of a young widow, a soda pop flavor, and the deadly raging influenza epidemic. Wickett doesn't hide major plot elements like Bee Season, nor does it hand you every character and facet of the story at once. It is many intersecting, overlapping layers that shift through time and narrators to create a ghostly story. Indeed, in the audio book version many of the sub-characters sound quite like ghosts as they recount their haunting memories.
I love books where the city is a character. Boston almost reaches out of these pages with her self-conscious history, shifting identities tied to neighborhoods and recent immigrants. The audio book has a lot of immigrant accents, clanging street noises, and enough bustle to make the story an immersion experience.
Another major character in this book is death. It's not like in Jennifer Egan's [b:A Visit from the Goon Squad|7331435|A Visit from the Goon Squad|Jennifer Egan|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1290480318s/7331435.jpg|8975330], where the goon is time, but in Wickett's, death is all around. It is the major motivating factor of nearly every plot line. The death of a husband drives a poor widow back to her parents house. A soda mogul creates his industry heir from a mailroom clerk who shares a name with his dead son. Deaths of a neighbor, a brother, or a spouse define the moments where Something Happens in this book. The secondary narrators are ghosts talking from beyond the grave. There is so much death, loss, grief and sadness in this book, but it's not an especially sad or dramatic book. The plain, forthright language and earnest characters weave death seamlessly into life like a 50/50 cotton/poly blend.
Overall, this wasn't my most favorite book ever, for no particular reason, but it was highly enjoyable. Goldberg brings a cast of strong, developed characters that sometimes do inadvisable things because they feel like they should. Lydia is a capable, independent young woman who is entirely a product of her loved ones, her heritage and her community, as we all are. The story is set in an interesting place at a difficult time, and the humanity of it all shows through very close to the surface. And that, gentle reader, is entirely what I loved about Bee Season.
Also, though? Lydia's husband, Henry? he kind of creeped me out in a major way. Was that just me?
jessrock's review against another edition
4.0
By the author of [book: Bee Season]. This one definitely isn't as good as [book: Bee Season], but it's a very different book and is enjoyable in its own right. The artifices of the storytelling are awkward at first, between the marginalia written by dead people and the consistent ending of chapters with cryptic letters from an unknown author and articles from newspapers and newsletters. While the pattern of the book got more comfortable as I worked my way through the story, I never got completely used to the way the book was set up, and think it's ultimately a little too gimmicky to be a wholly successful book. However, the story is a compelling one and is well worth reading, especially if you don't go to it expecting another [book: Bee Season]. It's a very different novel, but still worth reading.
szeglin's review against another edition
3.0
This was an interesting novel. I really like the way Goldberg comments on the subjectivity of memory by adding other viewpoints, or related thoughts, to the margins. However, some of the extra material at the end of each chapter (I kept thinking of them as "interjections") disrupted the flow of the narrative. Most of the material ties back in to the main storyline, but I think overall this approach made the story more confusing.
The ending also seemed rather abrupt and anticlimactic. I was actually surprised when I turned the last page and saw the author's note--was that really the ending?
I do appreciate what Goldberg was trying to do. This is an ambitious work, in terms of technique! If she had used just one of the flourishes, perhaps I would have found the story to be more cohesive.
The ending also seemed rather abrupt and anticlimactic. I was actually surprised when I turned the last page and saw the author's note--was that really the ending?
I do appreciate what Goldberg was trying to do. This is an ambitious work, in terms of technique! If she had used just one of the flourishes, perhaps I would have found the story to be more cohesive.
sharonfalduto's review against another edition
5.0
A re read for me; I enjoyed this book. Set in Boston during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 (or so), with the main story focusing on a young woman who loses loved ones to the flu and volunteers to work on a study about the flu. With commentary in the sidebar from the departed.
scorpstar77's review against another edition
4.0
I had a really hard time deciding how to rate this book. I picked it up because I adore the author's first book, [b:Bee Season|251762|Bee Season|Myla Goldberg|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51im0CfE3TL._SL75_.jpg|2482870], finding it one of the most interesting and complex books written in my lifetime. And Wickett's Remedy was really interesting and complex, too...but I never could reconcile exactly how the story of the actual placebo "remedy" and QD Soda fit into the rest of the book.
Lydia Wickett is the main character, a poor shopgirl from South Boston who falls in love with and marries a man from the wealthier area of town. The creation of Wickett's Remedy is his scheme, in which she participates reluctantly by creating the recipe flavoring the remedy and designing the label. After his death (due to flu, which led to pneumonia), she moves back in with her parents, grief-stricken.
A year or two later, the infamous Spanish influenza epidemic hits Boston and the rest of the U.S. Lydia loses friends and family to the epidemic, decides to become a nurse, and signs up to be a nurse's aide on a medical study regarding the transmission of the flu that's being held on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. She forms bonds with some of the other medical staff and patients there, and starts to overcome all of her grief.
In the background of all of this, there is a story being told through newsletter articles and letters about how Lydia's late husband's partner stole the formula for Wickett's Remedy without ever compensating her for it and turns it into a very popular soda, QD Soda, which makes him a very rich man while she continues to live a poor life. There is also commentary in the margins from the collective of dead, who are sort of a collective consciousness that still has individual memories somehow.
All of this makes for a very rich and complex story, but I still haven't wrapped my head around the purpose of the remedy/soda story in the rest of it. I was reading it for quite a long time, because I got stuck at the beginning. The first three or four chapters didn't hold my interest well, and I had to put it down for a while and read other things before I finally came back to it. It's very good, though, and once I got to about the fourth chapter, I had a hard time putting it down.
Lydia Wickett is the main character, a poor shopgirl from South Boston who falls in love with and marries a man from the wealthier area of town. The creation of Wickett's Remedy is his scheme, in which she participates reluctantly by creating the recipe flavoring the remedy and designing the label. After his death (due to flu, which led to pneumonia), she moves back in with her parents, grief-stricken.
A year or two later, the infamous Spanish influenza epidemic hits Boston and the rest of the U.S. Lydia loses friends and family to the epidemic, decides to become a nurse, and signs up to be a nurse's aide on a medical study regarding the transmission of the flu that's being held on an island off the coast of Massachusetts. She forms bonds with some of the other medical staff and patients there, and starts to overcome all of her grief.
In the background of all of this, there is a story being told through newsletter articles and letters about how Lydia's late husband's partner stole the formula for Wickett's Remedy without ever compensating her for it and turns it into a very popular soda, QD Soda, which makes him a very rich man while she continues to live a poor life. There is also commentary in the margins from the collective of dead, who are sort of a collective consciousness that still has individual memories somehow.
All of this makes for a very rich and complex story, but I still haven't wrapped my head around the purpose of the remedy/soda story in the rest of it. I was reading it for quite a long time, because I got stuck at the beginning. The first three or four chapters didn't hold my interest well, and I had to put it down for a while and read other things before I finally came back to it. It's very good, though, and once I got to about the fourth chapter, I had a hard time putting it down.
rachelgertrude's review against another edition
4.0
Wickett’s Remedy was an adventure in the summer of ’06. I read this book, greatly enjoying the main character’s flair for romance and humor. I suffered with the characters through the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, and enjoyed the protagonist’s romantic escapades too. I also loved her style of asserting little “asides” as to what other characters thought or remembered of a scene, and how they often corrected the narrator about what really happened.
thepoemreeder's review against another edition
4.0
A story woven through with bits of narrative, newspaper articles, letters, and overheard conversation, Wickett's Remedy takes place during the Spanish influenza epidemic in Boston, focusing around a woman named Lydia. Lydia marries young, her husband is a frail man from a wealthy family who doesn't want to be the doctor his parents have sent him off to be, and who develops the idea of "Wickett's Remedy." Henry wanted to be a journalist, and believes in the healing power words can bring. And so, with everty bottle of "medicine," the purchaser receives a letter from Henry. Never a moneymaker, it made Henry happy. That is, until he became quite ill, and died.
Lydia returns to her family, to find that her beloved brother has been drafted and is being sent off to war. When HE dies as well, she is sent into a tailspin, needing to find some sort of purpose in life. And she does find it--by volunteering to help give care at an experiment on Gallups Island meant to find the cause of the flu and subsequently, how to put an end to this growing plague.
Meanwhile, a young business associate of Henry's takes the drink of Wickett's Remedy and being to market it as a soda with his initials. Quentin Driscoll becomes like the man who founded Coca-Cola, running a vast empire whose influence transcends decades, and whose drink becomes a household favorite. Lydia never receives any credit or monetary compensation. It is not until Mr. Driscoll is aging and fading away in a senior center that we see the toll the remorse from this secret has taken on him.
The reason I give this book 4 stars instead of just 3 is for its ingenuity: in the margins of the pages are what appear to be little notes, and which is what they are. But they are notes from those who have died, and who also remember scenes described from Lydia's point of view, but these perceptions do not always match Lydia's. These "Whisperings" give the reader that little nudge of a reminder that we don't know what all lurks in the air around us, and that our memories are faulty at best. Our perceptions of reality or facts are just that - perceptions, for what one person remembers vividly another remembers quite differently. I enjoyed these little notes and felt as if I was being included into a different world, none which any living person is granted true access to.
Lydia returns to her family, to find that her beloved brother has been drafted and is being sent off to war. When HE dies as well, she is sent into a tailspin, needing to find some sort of purpose in life. And she does find it--by volunteering to help give care at an experiment on Gallups Island meant to find the cause of the flu and subsequently, how to put an end to this growing plague.
Meanwhile, a young business associate of Henry's takes the drink of Wickett's Remedy and being to market it as a soda with his initials. Quentin Driscoll becomes like the man who founded Coca-Cola, running a vast empire whose influence transcends decades, and whose drink becomes a household favorite. Lydia never receives any credit or monetary compensation. It is not until Mr. Driscoll is aging and fading away in a senior center that we see the toll the remorse from this secret has taken on him.
The reason I give this book 4 stars instead of just 3 is for its ingenuity: in the margins of the pages are what appear to be little notes, and which is what they are. But they are notes from those who have died, and who also remember scenes described from Lydia's point of view, but these perceptions do not always match Lydia's. These "Whisperings" give the reader that little nudge of a reminder that we don't know what all lurks in the air around us, and that our memories are faulty at best. Our perceptions of reality or facts are just that - perceptions, for what one person remembers vividly another remembers quite differently. I enjoyed these little notes and felt as if I was being included into a different world, none which any living person is granted true access to.
renatasnacks's review against another edition
4.0
Really well-crafted and clever. Plus who doesn't love a good read about the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic?
thebookchubi's review against another edition
4.0
A bit scattered of a novel. There is the first part of the novel, centering around Lydia finding her way out of South Boston, the second part dealing with the soda ripped off of her late husband, and the third part of the flu epidemic. The sections were meant to be intertwined I think, but I did not find that successful.
One of the gimmicks in the novel is the marginal notes explaining outside perspectives to the story. They were a bit difficult at first to understand as part of the story but once I was accustomed to the different voices I started to enjoy the flavor it added. Probably a faster process in a written copy.
Overall I enjoyed the story and thought it was a sweet tale. The ending could have been less abrupt though, as I did not get the resolution I was seeking in either of the main plot lines.
One of the gimmicks in the novel is the marginal notes explaining outside perspectives to the story. They were a bit difficult at first to understand as part of the story but once I was accustomed to the different voices I started to enjoy the flavor it added. Probably a faster process in a written copy.
Overall I enjoyed the story and thought it was a sweet tale. The ending could have been less abrupt though, as I did not get the resolution I was seeking in either of the main plot lines.
anatomydetective's review against another edition
3.0
The concepts, history, and historical documents were more interesting than the actual plot.