Myla Goldberg “Wickett’s Remedy”

I can’t remember anymore what prompted me long ago to put that book on my Amazon wishlist (it probably had something to do with the beautiful cover again), but when I recently found it on Bookmooch I decided to give it a go.

This is what Publishers Weekly had to say about the story:

The author of the bestselling Bee Season returns with an accomplished but peculiarly tensionless historical novel that follows the shifting fortunes of a young Irish-American woman. Raised in tough turn-of-the-century South Boston, Lydia Kilkenny works as a shopgirl at a fancy downtown department store, where she meets shy, hypochondriacal medical student Henry Wickett. After a brief courtship, the two marry (Henry down, Lydia decidedly up) in 1914. Henry quits school to promote his eponymous remedy, whose putative healing powers have less to do with the tasty brew that Lydia concocts than with the personal letters that Henry pens to each buyer. After failing to pass the army physical as the U.S. enters WWI, Henry quickly, dramatically dies of influenza, and Lydia returns to Southie, where she watches friends, neighbors and her beloved brother die in the 1918 epidemic. A flu study that employs human subjects is being conducted on Boston Harbor’s Gallups Island; lonely Lydia signs on as a nurse’s assistant, and there finds a smidgen of hope and a chance at a happier future. A pastiche of other voices deepens her story: chapters close with snippets from contemporary newspapers, conversations among soldiers and documents revealing the surprising fate of Wickett’s Remedy. And the dead offer margin commentary—by turns wistful, tender and corrective (and occasionally annoying).

This turned out to be a very quick read and I enjoyed especially the comments of the dead people in the margins (they literally are in the margins beside the main text and were a bit of a pain in the ass to read, because switching over to them meant a break in the flow of the story). It seems strange that they sounded so very much like the living, but on the other hand that was what made them so funny to me.

The story itself is strangely undramatic. Considering that there was a war going on and then additionally a worldwide flu epidemic with people dropping dead left, right and center, I think one could be excused to expect a bit more drama or at least action. But Lydia seems to go through life mostly as a spectator, having things happen to her, but not actually making them happen herself. That makes her a quite realistic character in my eyes, but sadly not a very engaging one.

Still, it was an quite enjoyable light read, nothing to write home about, but a good way to spend a lazy afternoon or two. But I don’t think I will go out of my way to read Myla Goldberg’s other book(s).