One of my least favorite T.C. Boyle novels, in which the milquetoast hero cures his ulcer and redeems his manhood by catching his wife having her womb manipulated in broad pastoral daylight by a doctor of movement therapy while a prominent advocate of vegetarianism looks on, masturbating. The neanderthal is unleashed in our hero, who grabs a stick shaped like a baseball bat from the leafy ground and proceeds to beat both his rivals bloody. Once he manages, brandishing said stick, to bring fear to his wife's eyes his marriage is saved and he manages to live a long and happy married life, engendering three daughters who "grew up to be leggy and lean, and they ate whatever they liked, within reason. Will was devoted to them". You just have to hope his wife doesn't let him anywhere near these leggy girls when he's brandishing his stick. There's plenty of wild plot in this novel, including a young con man, conned himself, who is arrested at a luncheon in the upscale sanitarium run by Dr. Kellog. The con man escapes and ends up owning a flat in Paris, an estate in Westchester, and a house in Zurich by marketing a 60 proof women's tonic. Plus there's an epic battle between Dr. Kellog, his alcoholic adopted son, a sickly tame wolf, and a female chimpanzee in which the vegetarian and bicycle-toned Dr. Kellog claims victory by drowning his son in a batch of nut butter.T.C. could be considered one of the founders of hysterical realism, the genre that James Wood defines when he says:"The big contemporary novel is a perpetual-motion machine that appears to have been embarrassed into velocity. It seems to want to abolish stillness, as if ashamed of silence–as it were, a criminal running endless charity marathons. Stories and sub-stories sprout on every page, as these novels continually flourish their glamorous congestion. Inseparable from this culture of permanent storytelling is the pursuit of vitality at all costs. Indeed, vitality is storytelling, as far as these books are concerned."This almost perfectly describes THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE, and many other T.C. novels as well. In the best of his novels, DROP CITY and SAN MIGUEL, T.C. restrains his his hysterical tendencies, and sticks with great benefit to a more classic plot. But who can really fault him, not me. Others of my favorites, like Margaret Atwood, have over larded fantastical plots into their books, presumably because it is a crowd pleaser. You only have to read a few chapters into any of George R.R. Martin's SONG OF ICE AND FIRE series to know that. It's just not my style, I prefer the classic plotters like St. Aubyn who give their main characters a chance to live and breathe. And when T.C. sticks to the classic style as he does in SAN MIGUEL, he's the best writer around.
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 formuliac. from the second the chimp was introduced in act i, i knew that it would go on a rampage before the novel was over. i plowed through the 476 pages because i liked the characters, even if the book was a little mean to them. this could have been the premise of a really good 240 page novel, or an even better 120 page novel. the idea here is, what if someone re-wrote "the magic mountain" but played just for laughs. but glad to have painted a TC boyle novel on my fuselage just for breadth of perspective.
What do You think about The Road To Wellville (1994)?
Regardless of how good this book is, my review of it will be forever tainted by the events surrounding my reading of it: I started reading the book just before first visiting my parents to help with my ailing mother, and finished it the day of her funeral just three weeks later. Her death came more quickly than we expected; the end of this book took came more slowly than I expected.Not that it was a bad book. In fact, it suggests that the real history of Kellog, the Battle Creek sanitorium movement, and the breakfast cereral industry it engendered is a fascinating one worthy of study. The fiction story wrapped around it isn't the greatest, seeming to waver between humor, fictionalized history and just plaiin fiction without a driving thread that either gives a good historical account or provides a compelling fictional story. So, it could make a good time-passer on a plane or vacation, but isn't a great deep explication of the events. Or maybe it just the thing for taking your mind off of the big issues of life when watching your mother fade and die.
—Todd Stockslager
Oh T.C. Boyle, I love you. This is one of his earlier novels, and it does not disappoint. A really fun look into the early 20th century of world of breakfast food tycoon - John Harvey Kellog. A satirical look at people's obsession with 'healthy' eating and quack medical procedures all in the name of living a healthy and pure life. While the methods in the book may seem ridiculous to us now, the connection to the present day health-food/living craze cannot be missed. This book oozes with memorable characters that jump right off the page. While it is a little long, I'm glad I pushed through till the end.
—Elise
Boyle has a unique flavor to his writing that I really enjoyed and I will probably give him one more try for that reason alone because this story really did nothing for me. There was a cast of eccentric characters, but I found myself seriously disliking every single one of them. The only one I was remotely routing for was Charlie, the hustler who gets hustled. Other than that, I pretty much detested everyone else and didn't really care one way or the other what happened to them in the end. I didn't love or hate this book. In fact, it left me with no strong feelings what so ever. When I finished reading I wasn't happy, sad, satisfied, wanting, angry...I was nothing. Well, I was slightly curious about the real Dr. Kellogg and read up a little on him online and found him to be just as unlikeable and crazy in real life.So this was a middle of the road book for me. Fun writing, unengaging story.
—Danielle Paglia
