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1 of 1 copy available
Wickett’s Remedy leads us back to Boston in the early part of the 20th century and into the world of Lydia, an Irish-American shop girl yearning for a grander world than the cramped confines of South Boston. She seems to be well on her way to the life she has dreamed of when she marries Henry Wickett, a shy medical student and the scion of a Boston Brahmin family. Soon after their wedding, however, Henry shocks Lydia by quitting medical school and creating a mail-order patent medicine called Wickett’s Remedy. And then just as the enterprise is getting off the ground, the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 begins its deadly sweep across the world, drastically changing their lives.
In a world turned almost unrecognizable by swift and sudden tragedy, Lydia finds herself working as a nurse in an experimental ward dedicated to understanding the raging epidemic — through the use of human subjects.
Meanwhile, we follow the fate of Henry’s beloved Wickett’s Remedy as his one-time business partner steals the recipe and transforms it into QD Soda, a wildly popular soft drink.
Based on years of research and evoking actual events, Wickett’s Remedy perfectly captures the texture of the times and brings a colourful cast of characters vividly to life, including a sad and funny chorus of the dead. With wit and dexterity, Goldberg has fashioned a novel that is both charming and grand. Wickett’s Remedy announces her arrival as a major novelist.
South Boston belonged to Lydia as profoundly and wordlessly as her thimble finger. Her knowledge of its streets was more complete than any atlas, her mental maps reflecting changes that occurred from season to season, day to day, and hour to hour. Each time she left 28 D Street — one among a row of identical triple-decker houses, the tenements lining the street like so many stained teeth — her route reflected this internal almanac. . . .
For ten years this was enough. Then in fifth grade, Lydia saw a city map and realized her entire world was a mitten dangling from Boston’s sleeve. Across the bridge lay Washington Street — the longest street in all New England — which began like any other but then continued north, a single determined thread of cobblestone that wove itself through every town from Boston to Providence. Once Lydia saw Washington Street she knew she could not allow it to exist without her.
—excerpt from Wickett's Remedy
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 20, 2005 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780739345818
- File size: 316206 KB
- Duration: 10:58:45
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Lydia Wickett creates a patent "remedy," and her husband writes soothing letters to their mail-order clients. Wickett's Remedy and the travails of WWI soon drift off, while Boston's 1918 influenza epidemic takes center stage. Author/narrator Goldberg gives a straightforward reading. Unfortunately, numerous interior monologues and voices from the dead (done by the supporting cast) slow things down and add confusion. Additionally, these insertions are so over-reverbed that the echo threatens to overshadow the text. Excessive incidental music and sporadic, gimmicky sound effects represent a clear case of overkill. Audio purists will be irritated by the frequent interruptions to the narrative flow of this ambitious tale from the author of BEE SEASON. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine -
July 25, 2005
The author of the bestselling Bee Season
returns with an accomplished but peculiarly tensionless historical novel that follows the shifting fortunes of a young Irish-American woman. Raised in tough turn-of-the-century South Boston, Lydia Kilkenny works as a shopgirl at a fancy downtown department store, where she meets shy, hypochondriacal medical student Henry Wickett. After a brief courtship, the two marry (Henry down, Lydia decidedly up) in 1914. Henry quits school to promote his eponymous remedy, whose putative healing powers have less to do with the tasty brew that Lydia concocts than with the personal letters that Henry pens to each buyer. After failing to pass the army physical as the U.S. enters WWI, Henry quickly, dramatically dies of influenza, and Lydia returns to Southie, where she watches friends, neighbors and her beloved brother die in the 1918 epidemic. A flu study that employs human subjects is being conducted on Boston Harbor's Gallups Island; lonely Lydia signs on as a nurse's assistant, and there finds a smidgen of hope and a chance at a happier future. A pastiche of other voices deepens her story: chapters close with snippets from contemporary newspapers, conversations among soldiers and documents revealing the surprising fate of Wickett's Remedy. And the dead offer margin commentary—by turns wistful, tender and corrective (and occasionally annoying). Yet as well-researched, polished and poignant as the book is, Goldberg never quite locks in her characters' mindsets, and sometimes seems adrift amid period detritus. While readers will admire Lydia, they may not feel they ever truly know her. Agent, Wendy Schmalz.
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