It's time for
another installment of "Book Sarah Read While On The Elliptical And Loved So Much She Wished She Had a Book Club With Which To Discuss It So Instead She's Going to Tell The People Who Read And/Or Stumble Upon Her Blog."
But that post title was too long for the little text box. So instead, we shall call it, Smart (Kitchen) Reads.
The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald tells the story of Henry House, an orphan boy and "practice baby" brought to live onto the Wilton College campus just after being born, to be cared for through his infancy by the women in the Home Economics program. Cycling one week stints at a time, the six women i in the program became temporary "mothers" for Henry while living in a house on campus, all in efforts to 'train' them how to be perfect housewives, homemakers, and mothers. The story is based on the very real existence of such "practice babies" in the 1950s. [The photo in the bottom left, below, was the one that inspired the author's ficitionalized account.]
[ Source ]Martha Gaines, the head of the program, and "the women upstairs," has seen these babies come and go, and watched the two-year-old "practice babies" be sent off to adoptive families many times...but with Henry, something changes. Martha begins to feel a mother's love for Henry, and, through a series of plot twists, ends up adopting him as her own, and raising him in the practice house, while the program continues to run around him.
While this story is about Martha and the way that her love for Henry becomes enrobed with fierce jealousy of the other "mothers," Henry, and his simultaneously detachment from the world, and desire to possess and charm the women within it, is the true focus of the story.
Having always been a fan of the bildungsroman
(a novel centered around the protagonists growth into adulthood, of which A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man--which yes, I, shockingly, loved--is a prime example) throughout my years as an English major, I found the psychological ramifications of Henry's upbringing at the hands of so many potential mothers fascinating. I don't want to give too much away, but his future relationships (most of which suffer and break apart) are impacted extensively by the way he grew up, learning to please everyone in order to hurt no one.
There are also fun cultural references, as Henry works for Walt Disney as a cartoonist on Mary Poppins, and then moves to London to work on the cartoons for The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, so that adds a little bit of improbablity. :)
But that post title was too long for the little text box. So instead, we shall call it, Smart (Kitchen) Reads.
While this story is about Martha and the way that her love for Henry becomes enrobed with fierce jealousy of the other "mothers," Henry, and his simultaneously detachment from the world, and desire to possess and charm the women within it, is the true focus of the story.
Having always been a fan of the bildungsroman (a novel centered around the protagonists growth into adulthood, of which A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man--which yes, I, shockingly, loved--is a prime example) throughout my years as an English major, I found the psychological ramifications of Henry's upbringing at the hands of so many potential mothers fascinating. I don't want to give too much away, but his future relationships (most of which suffer and break apart) are impacted extensively by the way he grew up, learning to please everyone in order to hurt no one.
There are also fun cultural references, as Henry works for Walt Disney as a cartoonist on Mary Poppins, and then moves to London to work on the cartoons for The Beatles' Yellow Submarine, so that adds a little bit of improbablity. :)