book data
1,002 ratings,
3.56
average rating, 104 reviews
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published
May 1st 1993
(first published 1994)
by Viking Adult
binding
Hardcover, 496 pages
isbn
0670843342
(isbn13: 9780670843343)
description
The latest novel by the author of World's End focuses on the great American breakfast food and exotic enema craze of 1907 to comment on the nation...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1,331)
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5 stars (179)
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3 stars (325)
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2 stars (104)
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1 star (26)
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avg 3.56
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
Read in October, 2008
You have to admire TC Boyle, this is the forth book (after Drop City, Tortilla Curtain and Inner Circle) of his that i have read and they are all different, with different themes and time frames.
This is comedy gold and tells the story of the Kellog family, superbly played by Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptaion.
He runs a sanitarioum in 19th Century smallsville america with some bizarre treatments - mostly based around the bowell and the avoidance of meat, coffee and drin...more
This is comedy gold and tells the story of the Kellog family, superbly played by Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptaion.
He runs a sanitarioum in 19th Century smallsville america with some bizarre treatments - mostly based around the bowell and the avoidance of meat, coffee and drin...more
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Read in January, 2009
You expect a certain amount of snarkiness from Boyle, and Wellville doesn't dissapoint, but I found no glee in it, as I did in Drop City, or Budding Prospects, or even Water Music. I kept thinking what a marvelous writer he is, yet how unfortunate his choice of stories and characters are. I get it that Kellog's sanitarium and its regimens were for the turn of the century's health nuts, and that many of its practices were misguided and downright dangerous in some cases. I get that there were huck...more
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Read in September, 2007
The librarian recommended this book, as he likes the author. I did enjoy the book. A lot of the story was based on loose facts. It is fun to see how people would go to extremes to be healthy back in the days before liposuction, botox and plastic surgery. It was an interesting read and I hear there is a movie based off of this book, which I am looking forward to seeing.
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Read in April, 1993
One of the best comic novels of the late 20th century. The language is beautiful and precise, the characterizations rich and varied, the story a wild ride into the American stomach.
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Read in March, 2009
T.C. Boyle has this fascination with strange people. He did a book on Kinsey, and his most recent was on that architect whose name escapes me right now. In this book, Boyle focuses on one of the Kellogg brothers (not the one who make corn flakes famous, but his brother) who has established an empire on America's fascination with health, and on the population's willingness to undergo any kind of humiliation in the name of health. I enjoyed the book, but I thought it was a mite long. I got tired b...more
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Read in July, 2003
I checked out The Road to Wellville on somewhat of a whim. I'd seen a small part of the movie on TV a few days before & it caught my interest.
Will & Eleanor Lightbody, upper-middle class residents of a genteel New York town, spend the better part of a year at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. After Eleanor had a miscarriage, she travelled to the San and became one of Dr. Kellogg's "health freaks". She convinced her husband to join her, as he had been suffering from dyspepsia fo...more
Will & Eleanor Lightbody, upper-middle class residents of a genteel New York town, spend the better part of a year at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. After Eleanor had a miscarriage, she travelled to the San and became one of Dr. Kellogg's "health freaks". She convinced her husband to join her, as he had been suffering from dyspepsia fo...more
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Read in June, 2007
This was my first TC Boyle novel and I admit that I was enchanted in the first 100 pages or so, but in the end, this book came out at about 2.5 stars for me - somewhere between OK & I liked it.
It's a fascinating setting with a lively cast of characters and dual plot lines that intersect and play off each other. On the one side, you have the luckless Will Lightbody (great name), doing his best to survive the complete idiocy of the Battle Creek Health Sanitarium run by Dr. Joseph Kello...more
It's a fascinating setting with a lively cast of characters and dual plot lines that intersect and play off each other. On the one side, you have the luckless Will Lightbody (great name), doing his best to survive the complete idiocy of the Battle Creek Health Sanitarium run by Dr. Joseph Kello...more
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Read in January, 2008
Amazing! This book was one of my thrift shop finds, and I started reading it and just could not finish. I don't know how far I read--135 pages? 150 pages? Enough to know that I was not going to finish the book, that I had no desire to proceed with it anymore.
So just this moment I realised that it is written by the same guy who wrote The Tortilla Curtain, which I really loved! Go figure. I still won't finish Wellville.
So just this moment I realised that it is written by the same guy who wrote The Tortilla Curtain, which I really loved! Go figure. I still won't finish Wellville.
Read in May, 2009
I could not finish this book. I struggled through the first 100 or so pages and then a friend enlightened me and made me realize I waste my time sticking with books I don't enjoy. "There are too many books out there to read to waste time on ones you don't like." From now on, if I don't like a book, I'm not going to feel guilty about quitting! I feel so free!
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Read in June, 2009
I didn't feel sympathetic with any of the characters in this implausible yet predictable novel that takes place in Battle Creek at Dr.Kellogg's health spa. Actually, I felt sympathetic with Will for his severe indigestion problem because I have been having acid reflux myself, but his story and the other intertwining stories went nowhere and were so repetitive, it was punishment to read all the way to the end; but I did, because I don't rate a book if I don't read all of it.
Since reading Drop City, I've been meaning to read more Boyle. Wellville couldn't be more different -- and clearly, I loved it.
Satire that never feels like it, Wellville explores the cereal and sanitarium phase of the early 20th century. It's laugh-out-loud funny without every seeming like it's meant to be. The entire book is the straight man.
I was fascinated by the "healthful living" procedures and diet, in love with the off-kilter characters and enamored by th...more
Satire that never feels like it, Wellville explores the cereal and sanitarium phase of the early 20th century. It's laugh-out-loud funny without every seeming like it's meant to be. The entire book is the straight man.
I was fascinated by the "healthful living" procedures and diet, in love with the off-kilter characters and enamored by th...more
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Read in August, 2008
Done to a turn, like a Porterhouse steak, grilled to a perfect medium rare. Or should I say: "like a Protose Pattie perfectly congealed." This is an excellent, well-written, funny novel about Kellogg and Battle Creek in its heyday. An incredible amount of research must have been undertaken in order to craft such a classic piece of American fiction. I don't know how TC Boyle does it. Like his book on the Kinseys, he writes with so much confidence and factual detail you'd think he'd ...more
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As a child who grew up spending summers in the Battle Creek area, I decided to pick this one up at the library. I'm not sure how accurate the history is, but knowing me, I'll do some research to find out.
So far, it's a pretty good book...
So far, it's a pretty good book...
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Read in January, 2008
A brilliant novel about, of all things, the health food industry in Battle Creek, Michigan, at the turn of the century. Really great characters, crazy plot twists, and a lot of fun to read. I've belatedly become a huge fan of T.C. Boyle.
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Read in January, 1995
This is a novel based on the health resort-sanitarium run by William Kellogg, I believe, in Battle Creek. Sounds dubious, I know, but the appeal of the book is in depicting vividly the kind of people -- women with physical and emotional ailments, breakfast health food entrepreneurs and hustlers of all types -- who congregated in the area to cash in on the latest attempt to make money off people's desire for health and fitness, so there are abundant parallels to today. It was also a place where p...more
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bookshelves:
a-we-ll-see,
fiction,
form_complexia,
f_interpretations,
historical,
novel,
science,
thtr-art-film-music-etc--,
to-read
I think I'd have to be in a really particular mood to get into this book - or maybe after seeing the Dear-John-Cusack film if I liked that a lot? We'll see..
Note - 'Drop City' by him is in 1001 list, and well-liked by some..
Note - 'Drop City' by him is in 1001 list, and well-liked by some..
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Read in August, 2007
Another T.C. Boyle - this one more straight satire than Drop City. It's a novel about Dr. John Kellogg, inventor of corn flakes, and promoter of all manner of rather bizarre health fads in the beginning of the 1900's. My biggest hang up was that I felt Boyle's satire was playing Dr. Kellogg's promotion of a vegetarian diet as equally absurd as his prescriptions for patients to bathe in water infused with electric current, or inhale radium. As a long time vegetarian I found that a little quest...more
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Read in November, 2008
A hilarious story about the breakfast cereal heyday in Battle Creek, MI. The movie follows the novel fairly closely.
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I love T.C. Boyle's historical fiction, but this one isn't half as good as The Women or The Inner Circle.
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Read in July, 2007
It started great, wonderful premise and colourful writing. But then it just went on and on without actually going anywhere. (Needed a bit of roughage to move things through. Or at least a good edit to cut to the chase.) I persevered but by midway it set me on the road to Snoozeville. Finally gave up and didn't finish. I'd recommend Boyle's terrific Talk Talk instead, or the Inner Circle.
I haven't seen the movie, would be interested to see how/if the film snapped it into shape.
I haven't seen the movie, would be interested to see how/if the film snapped it into shape.
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