Synopses & Reviews
In a multidimensional, intricately wrought narrative, Myla Goldberg leads us back to Boston in the early part of the twentieth century and into two completely captivating worlds. One is that of Lydia, an Irish American shopgirl with bigger aspirations than your average young woman from 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. However, soon after their wedding, Henry abruptly quits medical school to create a mail-order patent medicine called Wickett's Remedy, and just as Lydia begins to adjust to her husband's new vocation, the infamous Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 begins its deadly sweep across the world, irrevocably 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, a parallel narrative explores the world of QD Soda, the illegitimate offspring of Wickett's Remedy, stolen away by Henry Wickett's one-time business partner Quentin Driscoll, who goes about transforming it into a soft drink empire.
Throughout the novel we hear from a chorus of other voices who offer a running commentary from the book's margins, playing off the ongoing narrative and cleverly illuminating the slippery interplay of perception and memory. Based on years of research and evoking actual events, Wickett's Remedy perfectly captures the texture of the times and brings a colorful cast of characters vividly to life none more so than Lydia, a heroine as winning and appealing as Eliza, the beloved spelling champion of Bee Season.
With dazzling dexterity, Goldberg has fashioned a novel that beautifully combines the intimate and the epic. Wickett's Remedy announces her arrival as a major novelist.
Review
"[A] rich historical re-creation whose energy and ingenuity evoke memories of E.L. Doctorow's classic Ragtime....A fine novel very much in the American vein, and a quantum leap forward for the gifted Goldberg." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Like Bee Season, this sorrowful, humorous, and tender novel utterly satisfies. Congratulations to Goldberg on another masterpiece; highly recommended." Library Journal
Review
"Goldberg guides us through...wonderfully well-written chapters that would have made a strong short novel all on their own. Unfortunately, the book's power dissipates in its final movement." New York Times
Review
"Heavy on period detail and literary style, but light on plot, Myla Goldberg's disappointing second novel is easy to set down." Rocky Mountain News
Review
"In spite of its ornate structure, Wickett's Remedy is an appealingly straightforward tale about strength of spirit in times of crisis." Minneapolis Star Tribune
Synopsis
The triumphant follow-up to the bestselling Bee Season, Wickett's Remedy is a brilliant novel about the dream of progress personal, scientific, commercial, and cultural featuring a charming heroine whose desire for a better life comes up against the sweep of history.
About the Author
Myla Goldberg is the author of the bestselling Bee Season, which was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2000 and made into a film, and, most recently, of Time's Magpie, a book of essays about Prague. Her short stories have appeared in Harper's, McSweeney's, and failbetter. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Reading Group Guide
1. How does Myla Goldberg re-create the city of Boston in the early 1900s? What descriptive details bring this era to life?
2. What role do the ghostly voices in the margins of the text play in Wicketts Remedy? What kinds of commentary do they offer on the story? Why has Goldberg added this supernatural layer to her narrative?
3. How do the deceased try to communicate with the living in this novel? How do the living perceive these attempts?
4. After one day of volunteering at the hospital, Lydia announces: “I am meant to be a nurse. I am as sure of this as I have ever been about anything” [p. 200]. Why has helping the sick been such a compelling and transformative experience for her? How is her personal history related to this choice?
5. Henry and Lydia are quite different from one another. They come from vastly different neighborhoods and social classes and are dissimilar temperamentally and physically. What draws them together? What does each see in the other? In what ways do they complement each other?
6. What do the newspaper articles inserted into the text add to the story? What do they reveal about the temper of the times?
7. How does the story of QD Soda relate to the main narrative? What kind of man is Quentin Driscoll? Why does he cheat Lydia out of her share of the profits from QD Soda?
8. When Lydia sees Percival Coles corpse, she thinks: “A corpse was a dead animal. They were all nothing more than animals, bloated by vanity into wearing clothes and ascribing lofty purposes to their actions, when in reality they all died the same dumb death that awaited any overworked nag—limbs stiff, features frozen in a rictus of shock and pain” [p. 342]. What has brought Lydia to such a despairing view of human beings? Is she right about human vanity and pretension? In what ways was World War I an attempt to clothe base instincts in lofty purposes?
9. What is the attitude toward the war evinced in the novel? Why are Michael and his brothers so eager to join the fight?
10. In what ways do the characters in Wicketts Remedy and the era in which they live seem innocent compared to today? How do their views of sex, love, family, and duty differ from our own? In what ways are they similar?
11. What are the pleasures and rewards of reading historical fiction? What can a fictional narrative of a historical event or period give readers that a conventional historical account cannot?
12. How does Lydia change over the course of the novel? Is she fundamentally different at the end from how she is at the beginning?
13. One of the doctors at Gallups Island says of Lydia, “The girl doesnt know how to play bridge. She eats bacon like its filet mignon. She washes her clothes by hand rather than send them to the laundry. . . . And that accent!” [p. 285]. What ethnic and class prejudices are revealed in this assessment? To what extent is Lydia able to overcome these
prejudices?
14. What does Wicketts Remedy reveal about early-twentieth-century ideas of social, scientific, and commercial progress?