Helpful Score: 3
A wickedly comic look at turn-of-the-century fanatics in search of the magic pill to prolong their lives-or the profit to be had from manfacturing it.
Helpful Score: 2
THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE
T.C. Boyle
Penguin Books
Fiction
ISBN: 0140167188
Will Lightbody is a man with a stomach ailment whose only sin is loving his wife, Eleanor too much. Eleanor is a health nut, and when in 1907 she journeys to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's infamous Battle Creek, Michigan spa to live out the vegetarian ethos, Will goes too. Truth and fiction are blended in this splendid novel full of wonderful characters and broad satire.
T.C. Boyle
Penguin Books
Fiction
ISBN: 0140167188
Will Lightbody is a man with a stomach ailment whose only sin is loving his wife, Eleanor too much. Eleanor is a health nut, and when in 1907 she journeys to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's infamous Battle Creek, Michigan spa to live out the vegetarian ethos, Will goes too. Truth and fiction are blended in this splendid novel full of wonderful characters and broad satire.
Helpful Score: 2
The story of John Harvey Kellogg. Battle Creek, MI's famous cereal magnate and health promoter.
Helpful Score: 2
This is an unusual and amusing story of how one man thought he had a cure for ailments in 1907 Michigan, using food and exercise type therapy while persons stayed at his institution to get well. It is fiction and reads like a literary novel. Very entertaining.
Helpful Score: 1
Funny and lite, with an interesting story line. Prompted some research about the characters.
Helpful Score: 1
I have been a fan of T.C. Boyle for many years and have read several of his novels and short story collections. For the most part, I have enjoyed them all and really feel that Boyle is a masterful writer and storyteller. Many of his novels are based on actual persons and events including THE INNER CIRCLE about Kinsey and his sex research, THE WOMEN about Frank Lloyd Wright and his wives, and WATER MUSIC about the African explorer Mungo Park. In THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE, Boyle satirizes the inventor of the corn flake, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, and his celebrated spa in Battle Creek, Michigan, that was supposed to cure all ills. Kellogg used a variety of treatments (mostly quackery) at his spa including enforcing a strict vegetarian diet, a five-enema-a-day regimen, and treatments such as the sinusoidal electric bath. In the novel, Will and Eleanor Lightbody of Peterskill, New York, come into the sanatorium as patients. Eleanor is a zealot about the San's treatments but Will is made miserable with his diet including weeks of nothing but milk or grapes, the daily enemas, and the shocking bath treatments. In a parallel storyline, Charlie Ossining, comes to town to start his own breakfast-food company with his partner Bender. Then there is Kellogg's adopted wayward son George who has been out to get even with Kellogg for years. This all leads to a wacky storyline that is full of unexpected drama and over-the-top funny situations.
As usual, I enjoyed this Boyle look at a part of history that I wasn't at all familiar with. I'm sure he took a lot of liberties in telling this one but this made it all the more engaging to read. The copy of the book that I read was a tie-in to the movie version made in 1994 that starred Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Kellogg. I will be looking out for it. And I will be looking forward to reading more by Boyle.
As usual, I enjoyed this Boyle look at a part of history that I wasn't at all familiar with. I'm sure he took a lot of liberties in telling this one but this made it all the more engaging to read. The copy of the book that I read was a tie-in to the movie version made in 1994 that starred Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Kellogg. I will be looking out for it. And I will be looking forward to reading more by Boyle.
Helpful Score: 1
Entertaining in Boyle's usual style. Better than the movie.
Helpful Score: 1
Cute Story.
A funny turn of the century spa trip..
It seems that most of the books I've read recently have been made into motion pictures at some point, and this one is no exception, although I actually much prefer the novel to the movie, which was excessively farcical for my taste, seeming to center on the scatological. The novel, on the other hand, is much more realistic, having painted a more-than-adequate portrait of the health craze which gripped the early 20th century, the heady days of rampant quackery, with its newfangled gadgets emerging in ever greater numbers in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. The story weaves a seamless narrative of interwoven plots involving a diverse cast of characters, primarily a hyper-ill couple, the Lightbodies, an ambitious, yet feckless entrepreneur with more optimism than brains, the Great Man himself, one John Harvey Kellogg, the brother of the more well-known W.K. Kellogg, the breakfast food magnate, and his disturbed, ne'er-do-well adopted son, George, whom he considers his greatest failure. Kellogg holds some curiosity for me, as I was affiliated with the Arabian Horse Center which bears his name at the Cal State Polytechnic University at Pomona, where I spent time as an undergraduate.
The primary setting is the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a veritable Temple of Health, at least in the mind of its fanatic (though not as fanatic as some of his guests!) founder, who is obsessed the notion of biological living. In truth, the whole operation reeks of something like a medical experiment ward, what with patients being subjected to near-constant enemas to cure their "autointoxication," brought on by the sin of meat-eating and coffee-drinking, some of whom are electrocuted in an electric water bath or slowly poisoned to death by the new "miracle" radium cure, involving exposure to a newly discovered stone which emits miraculous "healing rays," (!!) only recently discovered by the Curies. The novel is also an admirable depiction of the excess of the Edwardian age, and the stark contrasts between rich and poor. Boyle's rather dry sense of humor may rub some readers the wrong way, however, as he seemingly sets up his poor characters for success, yet snatches it from them at the most inopportune moment, but the effect on the whole is hilarious, if a little warped. The length, at more than 450 pages, is slightly straining; the prose is rather effusive, bordering on verbose, but it's generally quite engaging, reading very much like a novel of the period, in fact. Overall, I would recommend it, but it does take some time and effort and something of a commitment to get through.
The primary setting is the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a veritable Temple of Health, at least in the mind of its fanatic (though not as fanatic as some of his guests!) founder, who is obsessed the notion of biological living. In truth, the whole operation reeks of something like a medical experiment ward, what with patients being subjected to near-constant enemas to cure their "autointoxication," brought on by the sin of meat-eating and coffee-drinking, some of whom are electrocuted in an electric water bath or slowly poisoned to death by the new "miracle" radium cure, involving exposure to a newly discovered stone which emits miraculous "healing rays," (!!) only recently discovered by the Curies. The novel is also an admirable depiction of the excess of the Edwardian age, and the stark contrasts between rich and poor. Boyle's rather dry sense of humor may rub some readers the wrong way, however, as he seemingly sets up his poor characters for success, yet snatches it from them at the most inopportune moment, but the effect on the whole is hilarious, if a little warped. The length, at more than 450 pages, is slightly straining; the prose is rather effusive, bordering on verbose, but it's generally quite engaging, reading very much like a novel of the period, in fact. Overall, I would recommend it, but it does take some time and effort and something of a commitment to get through.
Oh the satire, the P.T. Barnum like "healthy living" culture, I loved every word of this. I recommend this book to every fad cure devotee I know.
My book has a different cover than shown.
