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| View Larger Image | Wickett's Remedy: A Novel
by Myla Goldberg
| | List Price: | $14.00 | | Price: | $11.90 | | You Save: | $2.10 (15%) |  | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours | | | | | Sales Rank: | 410621 | | Studio: | Anchor | | | Binding: | Paperback | | Number Of Pages: | 384 | | Publication Date: | October 10, 2006 | | Publisher: | Anchor |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Lydia Kilkenny is eager to move beyond her South Boston childhood, and when she marries Henry Wickett, a shy Boston Brahmin who plans to become a doctor, her future seems assured. That path changes when Henry abandons his medical studies and enlists Lydia to help him invent a mail-order medicine called Wickett’s Remedy. Then the 1918 influenza epidemic sweeps through Boston, and in a world turned upside down Lydia must forge her own path through the tragedy unfolding around her. As she secures work as a nurse at a curious island medical station conducting human research into the disease, Henry’s former business partner steals the formula for Wickett’s Remedy to create for himself a new future, trying—and almost succeeding—to erase the past he is leaving behind.
Alive with narrative ingenuity, and tinged with humor as well as sorrow, this inspired recreation of a forgotten era powerfully reminds us how much individual voices matter—in history and in life. |
Amazon.com
One day in her kitchen, Lydia Wickett devises a harmless, medicinal-tasting concoction that her enterprising husband bottles under the moniker "Wickett¹s Remedy." Myla Goldberg's unconventional second novel, named for the potion, follows the (mis)fortunes of the loving Wicketts and the strange fate of their recipe as it is reincarnated by an unscrupulous businessman as the trendy "QD Soda." But there is nothing effervescent about Wickett's Remedy, a beautifully written but pessimistic follow-up to Goldberg's bestselling debut, Bee Season. Set mostly in working-class south Boston before and during the First World War, the novel is laden with illness and tragedy. Poor Lydia barely staggers onto her feet after her young husband's sudden death of pneumonia when her family is swirled into the Influenza epidemic of 1918--fascinatingly, horribly described by Goldberg. Death follows death, until Lydia, volunteering in the overwhelmed wards of the local hospital, discovers the profound intimacy of nursing: a "shared human undercurrent detectable only when the dictates of name, sex, and social standing were erased." Lydia's experiences are annotated with marginal comments from the dead (literally marginal: the remarks are in a smaller type in the outside margins of the text). This "whispering undercurrent" rises into articulation when one of the dead feels an urge to comment on Lydia's memories. The statements of the dead can be funny or poignant (e.g. "Jefferson Carver, the Public Health Services first colored elevator operator and the car¹s fourth occupant, has become resigned to his omission from the partial memories of his white passengers."), but most often correct fine points in the narrative or complain about slights and oversights. The dead have a "shared desire: that in an unguarded moment, Our whisperings will broach a living ear." Sadly, they don't have much more to contribute than the kind of cantankerous ego-babble we expect from the living. Although this chorus of the dead is a brave innovation, it fails Wickett¹s Remedy because the perspective of eternity lessens the force of Lydia's story. It would lessen anyone's story. It may be more realistic to view our sufferings and ambitions--our very personalities--as specks in a cosmic blur, but it puts a damper on our wilder emotions. --Regina Marler |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 28 reviews)
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A Disappointing Read 
While this novel was on a subject that I usually find rather interesting, I found the work itself to be lacking. The "whisperings" in the margins only distract the reader and provide little to no substance to the work. Additionally, the subplot involving the origin of the popular soda recipe could have been better developed. Overall, I would not recommend this book unless you really are sick and stuck on the couch, but even then it won't make you feel much better.
March 27, 2008 | |
A bit thin 
I am ambivalent about Wickett's Remedy. (I read the paperback. I understand she rewrote it from the hard cover edition.) I enjoyed the historical setting. Myla Godberg did a good job of evoking the period of the Influenza epidemic. I got a good sense for the setting as well and could well accept her premise. The margin notes were, I thought, one of the most clever and effective literary devices I've encountered. Wish I'd thought of it!
However, there was something about the way the threads of this story were woven together that was unsatisfying. Or perhaps it is that they weren't, in fact, woven together very well. I wonder if, having set the stage for this complicated novel, she struggled to make it work. And then, suddenly, it was just over. As I said - unsatisfying. It wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't all that great.
April 17, 2007 | |
Interesting, inventive, but sometimes weak 
I won't repeat the story, but the flu epidemic does make for an interesting background. The characters are believeable, the plot is fairly strong, the setting is well described, but yet it just lacks in places. It's almost as if the author was trying to tell two stories: one about the epidemic and the other about the stealing of the formula for Wickett's remedy which never really rings true. It's too bad because I feel that could have helped develop Lydia's character so much more.
It took me a while to get used to the marginal notes, but I did find them interesting. Shows that what one person sees could be quite different than what another sees. The other "additions" of newspaper articles, newsletters, etc. I found to be quite annoying at times.
Overall, it was a good read but sometimes more effort than it should have been.
February 28, 2007 | |
Lyrical, Moving, and Inventive 
It's lovely, with an inventive narrative. The whisperers are charming, funny, and heartbreaking. A beautiful novel, especially for those who love historical fiction.
January 08, 2007 | |
Uneven -- often good, never great
Wickett's Remedy represents an idea that had a lot of potential but which never fully evolved into the novel it might have been. I have to give Goldberg credit for attempting some very ambitious narrative techniques (the marginal voices of the dead, the epistolary interludes from the present, while most of the novel proper takes place in the past), but they never fully mesh, and consequently, they feel more like a gimmick than a groundbreaking new narrative style.
For me, the novel proper (following the story of Lydia and the 1918 influenza epidemic) was FAR more interesting than the present-day story of how Wickett's Remedy was stolen and developed into a successful soda product. And the marginal voices of the dead were just that -- marginal. I never could make up my mind what I thought of that, which in itself is probably a sign that whatever Goldberg intended was never completely successful. At least, for me.
I understand that Ms. Goldberg substantially rewrote the novel for the paperback edition -- a rather daring choice -- but I can't speak to that edition. My comments pertain to the original hardcover. And for my money, it's nowhere close to her first novel, Bee Season, which I absolutely loved! Wicket's Remedy was interesting, but it never quite came together, and I never felt fully invested in the outcome of the story. A pity.
December 23, 2006 | |
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