Describe Books Toward The Road to Wellville
| Original Title: | The Road to Wellville |
| ISBN: | 0140167188 (ISBN13: 9780140167184) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Dr John Harvey Kellogg, George Kellogg, Eleanor Lightbody, Will Lightbody, Charlie Ossining, Goodloe H. Bender |
| Setting: | Battle Creek, Michigan(United States) Michigan(United States) |
T. Coraghessan Boyle
Paperback | Pages: 496 pages Rating: 3.67 | 5838 Users | 403 Reviews
Identify About Books The Road to Wellville
| Title | : | The Road to Wellville |
| Author | : | T. Coraghessan Boyle |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 496 pages |
| Published | : | May 1st 1994 by Penguin Books (first published 1993) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Humor. Novels. Literature. Contemporary |
Description Concering Books The Road to Wellville
Will Lightbody is a man with a stomach ailment whose only sin is loving his wife, Eleanor, too much. Eleanor is a health nut of the first stripe, and when in 1907 she journeys to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's infamous Battle Creek Spa to live out the vegetarian ethos, poor Will goes too.So begins T. Coraghessan Boyle's 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 manufacturing it. Brimming with a Dickensian cast of characters and laced with wildly wonderful plot twists, Jane Smiley in The New York Times Book Review called The Road to Wellville "a marvel, enjoyable from beginning to end."
Rating About Books The Road to Wellville
Ratings: 3.67 From 5838 Users | 403 ReviewsCritique About Books The Road to Wellville
There isn't a TC Boyle book that I don't love. This one seems like a cut from today; rather, than a book about the past. Doctors revered as gods, money buying health, a thousand hucksters out there hustling so we call all live forever....I mean.(If 4.5 rating were possible) I started reading this book in California upon recommendation from a friend knowing nothing about it and quickly got pulled into the narrative. Then I borrowed it and left it on a plane. I rarely pick up fiction, but from winter to summer the near 500 pages begged me to finish them. The story dragged on a bit (with weird twists) near the end. Overall, the characters and their different perspectives were entertaining and the book is well-written. It's historical
The Road to Wellville is an at-times fascinating, at-times dull historical fiction about John Harvey Kellogg and his cult-like following of health nuts at the turn of the century. The fascinating parts are really fascinating and the dull parts are, thankfully, not that dull, thanks to T.C. Boyle's expertise with the English language. If thinks had moved along at a brisker pace, it would have held my attention better. This is billed as a comic novel, but maybe the long passages made me too drowsy
I can see how this would make a nice movie. There are some humorous scenes in it for sure. But the author became extremely redundant. Yes, I get it that the patients at Dr. Kellogg's sanitarium undergo enemas multiple times per day, have starvation-level vegetarian diets prescribed to them, are forbidden to have sex, and engage in many other unorthodoxed treatments. After half the book was over, these facts were being rehashed over and over and over when the author could have just resolved the
1907.Battle Creek, Michigan.The American bourgeois were lining up to get top treatments for their sick, frail bodies at the Sanatorium. Most of them suffered the same ailment: their colons were shot to hell. The man in charge (and who could save them) was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Surgeon, inventor, author, cap'n of industry. His methods were simple but very challenging.Stop eating meat, stop drinking, stop smoking. Don't worry. The menu in the San living room would make you want to forget those
TC Boyle has taken the historical figure John Harvey Kellogg who founded a bizarre health spa and invented cornflakes and has created an intelligent novel set at the spa. Eleanor Lightbody has been to the spa twice before and, like all well-meaning wives, has decided her husband, Will, will benefit from Kellogg's health miracles. Kellogg is written as authoritarian monomaniac with grandiose delusions about his power over his patients' lives.The satirical read is entertaining, intelligent and
3.5 stars, really, but goodreads' war on subtlety continues. as a stylistic exercise this is a triumph. as an actual novel, something south of there, although not like antarctica south. very much in the vein of new yorker humor articles -- where my response is "ah, i see this person is making a joke" as opposed to actually laughing or feeling amused. there were a few exceptions: the repetition of "womb manipulation" toward the end gets pretty funny. but a lot of the other stuff really felt
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