A Literary Life

     I preface this book by saying that I didn’t actually read it. I listened to the book on CD in my car, which some people would say is as good as reading it and some would say is dissimilar. In this case, I am leaning towards the latter. I think hearing the book read was perhaps a disservice to the book. There were so many characters, asides, breaks, etc. that there was no way that one main reader (who was the author) and a few guest voices could realistically pull it off. I couldn’t help but cringe at the author’s rather girlish voice trying to put on all these different male tones. It was like a little girl clomping around in her dad’s large shoes — uncomfortable and auditorial unappealing. Plus, listening to the same voice read throughout helped me pick up on the author’s style and not in a good way. For instant, I began to pick up on her patterns, especially in the dialogue, which was rather stilted and overly polite, too correct for real speech.

On the other hand, the author also had a great descriptive style at points, using language in interesting, thought-provoking and very Kate-approved ways. Wickett’s Remedy is an entertaining little tale about a girl who marries a would-be doctor, who drops out of med school to sell a patent medicine (though the motivational letters that accompany the potion are the real balm) and then promptly drops dead of influenza. Then the story follows our young widow, who gets wrapped up in the influenza outbreak of the WWI era. Throughout, the tale is punctuated with news breaks, secondary characters’ conversations and the asides of the dead, who pipe up to explain how the voice telling the story remembered things slightly wrong or different from what really happened.

While our little widow flits around Boston and sickness, the remedy is mostly forgotten by her, but is discussed via insertion of other voices. The remedy is made into a soda by an old business partner of her husband’s, who hypes it up and suceeds in a CocaCola fashion. Of course, the remedy and the resulting soda’s storyline is patchy at best and unconnected to the tale of our main character. From the title, I was hoping that there would be some poignant, meaningful culmination that would connect the tales. But no. At most, there was a causal connection near the end which didn’t cause the impact I would have expected, making me wonder if the remedy’s name in the title was an afterthought or a mistake.

Anyway. No, not a great story. But an interesting one. It was a good CD to avoid listening to the radio during the hour trip to Denver and the hour back. Then again, perhaps it is much better when taken through the eyes rather than the ears.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars – Vacation reading