Synopses & Reviews
The triumphant follow-up to the bestselling
Bee Season,
Wickett's Remedy is an epic but intimate novel about a young Irish-American woman facing down tragedy during the Great Flu epidemic of 1918.
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.
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
"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
"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
"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
Dreaming of a better life for herself, Lydia, an Irish-American shopgirl from South Boston, gets her chance when she marries medical student Henry Wickett, the scion of a Boston Brahmin family, but her life is turned upside down when Henry quits medical school to promote a patent medicine and the world is swept by the devastating Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918. Reader's Guide available. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
The triumphant follow-up to the bestselling Bee Season, Wickett's Remedy is an epic but intimate novel about a young Irish-American woman facing down tragedy during the Great Flu epidemic of 1918.
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?
“Her second novel is of a piece with [
Bee Season] in its invention and stylistic skill. . . . A warmhearted, unusual and intelligent consideration of a world about which few people know.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your groups discussion of Wicketts Remedy, Myla Goldbergs haunting follow-up to her bestselling Bee Season.
“Her second novel is of a piece with [
Bee Season] in its invention and stylistic skill. . . . A warmhearted, unusual and intelligent consideration of a world about which few people know.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are designed to enhance your group’s discussion of Wickett’s Remedy, Myla Goldberg’s haunting follow-up to her bestselling Bee Season.
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 Wickett’s 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 Cole’s 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 Wickett’s 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 Gallup’s Island says of Lydia, “The girl doesn’t know how to play bridge. She eats bacon like it’s 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 Wickett’s Remedy reveal about early-twentieth-century ideas of social, scientific, and commercial progress?