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A review by scorpstar77
Wickett's Remedy by Myla Goldberg
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.