Helpful Score: 9
Long winded and slow moving with no discernable point or ending to this book. I thought rather the same thing about Myla Goldberg's other book: Bee Season. I should have saved myself the trouble.
Helpful Score: 7
You know how annoying it is when you are telling a story and someone else keeps butting in with details that aren't even relevant to the main point of your tale? Unfortunately, that butter-inner wrote "Wickett's Remedy." This book literally has "comments" printed in the margins, and they are very distracting. You can choose to read the text of a chapter, and then follow up on the comments, or to read the comments as they occur, and then try to re-find the train of the original passage. Very irritating. Not worth the effort.
Helpful Score: 3
An interesting insight into the flu epidemic during and after WWI. I was not sure I would enjoy the "supernatural" voices that are interwoven into the story but they were fun and added comic relief. There were several plots and subplots that were connected and resolved in creative ways. The author shows great skill and wrote a unique novel.
Helpful Score: 1
In reading reviews of this book I was motivated to read it as it was supposed to depict a folk remedy that was developed into a type of soda drink that was found to cure the Flu disease. Also depicting the early days of life in Boston. Unfortunately I found neither of these to be developed in this book. Further the "footnotes" which are "side notes" in this book are mostly inane and I think the reader is better off not reading them as they confuse the flow of what story there is. I suppose this is not the way to get someone to request this book. However, there may be someone out there intrigued by this review? It has a nice picture on the cover.
