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Oct 22, 2008

Ian rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 05, 2009

Donna rated it:

TC Boyle is one of my favorite authors because I simply fall in love with his sentences. The man writes such incredible sentences! The Road to Wellville is a captivating story, too, so between the brilliant sentence structure and the fascinating story line, I was spellbound until the ending. Unfortunately, like other TC Boyle novels I've read, the ending missed the mark for me. It seems that Boyle paints himself into a corner and then just decides that the only way out is to walk back across the More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 01, 2011

Ken rated it:

THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE vividly demonstrates what it might have been like to have been a guest at John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium during the winter of 1907. Kellogg is the driven, odd-ball egomaniac who was arguably the most important player in the emerging spiritual and health industry at the dawn of the 20th century. The reader watches as Kellogg struggles to maintain and expand his economic empire of breakfast products, and secure his position as the Grand Poobah of health and fit More...

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Jan 22, 2009

Liz rated it:

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...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 14, 2007

Jen rated it:

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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Jan 26, 2012

Susan rated it:

A rollicking, shocking, satirical blast of a novel based on the life and times of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (he of the famous Battle Creek Sanitorium),his exploits with diet and enemas, as well as those of CW Post and other purveyors of tinctures and tortures designed to improve and extend the Good Life. Will Lightbody comes to the Spa with his wife, Eleanor, who's into dietary and physiological conditioning. A parallel story involves George Kellogg, adopted son of John, who pursues his father in More...

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Jan 31, 2010

Rauf rated it:

1907.
Battle Creek, Michigan.

The American bourgeois were lining up to get top treatments for their sick, frail bodies at the Sanatorium. Most of them suffered the same ailment: their colons were shot to hell. The man in charge (and who could save them) was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Surgeon, inventor, author, cap'n of industry. His methods were simple but very challenging.
Stop eating meat, stop drinking, stop smoking. Don't worry. The menu in the San living room would make y More...

8 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2012

Sheffy rated it:

TC Boyle does a good job of routing out crazy social experiments in history and exposing them in a fictional context (see "Drop City" for historical fictional account of a California Hippie colony transplanted to the Alaskan wilderness). In this oeuvre Boyle picks on Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Corn Flake and peanut butter fame, who ran a health sanitarium in Battle Creek, MI. In one fell swoop, he parodies the ridiculous measures the rich would revere the quackery of turn of the cent More...

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Sep 21, 2009

Aurora rated it:

This is one of those hard to rate books. It's funny and the subject and time period are surprising and compelling to me. But after a certain point, the story just stops moving forward. To stereotype wildly, this seems to happen to me often with modern fiction- I like the characters and the story, but somewhere in the middle things just start to amble, and the thing ends up being 400 pages for no good reason.

Historical fiction is so weird, anyway. Somewhere in the middle of this, I t More...

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Feb 26, 2010

David rated it:

The Road to Wellville is a story of people in search of Organic Grace. Dr. Kellogg's followers believe they suffer from the visceral accumulation of toxic sludge brought on by years of improper diet. Since the rigors of eating were never mastered better than by the great Cleansed Colon himself, Dr. Kellogg, they follow his every command. They scour their colons, blast out their bowels, purge their way to purity--yet, despite the daily intrusions to their lower orifices', they still end up diggin More...

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May 03, 2010

Jess rated it:

This book has been kicking around on my to-read shelf for over a year. What took me so long? It's fantastic. It's packed full of memorable characters, dark comedy, and a vivid look into a really esoteric piece of US consumer history. One of the central characters, a small-time con man, gets himself into a lie that's bigger than he can control, and watching him get more and more tangled in it drives the story forward at a quicker and quicker pace until the inevitable fall happens. And even though More...

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Aug 06, 2007

Stephan rated it:

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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Aug 06, 2010

MCOH rated it:

I'm not very far into this book yet, but the main characters are from my home town, which is kind of fun. The author has inexplicably changed the name from Peekskill to Peterskill, but he mentions illustrious town citizen Chauncy Depew, the Hudson Line, Lonsbury Pond, Water St., Division St. - lots of references to Peekskill. I was kind of intrigued, and so I looked up the author's bio, and sure enough, he was born and raised in Peekskill. Oddly, he also mentions at one point the town of Sed More...

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Jan 01, 2012

Frederick rated it:

T. C. Boyle's tale of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. The main characters are Will Lightbody, his wife Eleanor and Charlie Ossining. Also featured is Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, head of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. The book is set around 1907. Will and Eleanor are patients at the "San", submitting to Kellogg's ridiculous diets and diagnoses. Charlie is a young ambitious man looking to make a fortune in the breakfast cereal business. They meet in the train on the way to Batt More...

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Aug 22, 2009

Chris rated it:

Just finished this comic masterpiece from TC Boyle, one of my favorite American writers. This time out, Boyle focuses on turn of the century American health nuts, centering on the Sanitarium run by John Harvey Kellogg in Battle Creek, MI. Although the main characters are largely whiny, arrogant, or otherwise unlikeable, Boyle (as he always does) finds the humanity behind the characters, which is one of the things that makes his novels so enjoyable.

If the concept of multiple daily enem More...

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Jun 13, 2009

Tom rated it:

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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May 24, 2011

Carol rated it:

The Road to Wellville by T C. Boyle was an ambitious story that seemed to loose focus in the middle of the book, but finished with a bang. Set in Battle Creek Michigan in 1907, the story is about the nascent health food movement that Dr. Harvey Kellogg was deeply involved with. He was the head of a large Sanitarium that treated the wealthy with the latest health fads, including vegetarian diets, enemas, electric current therapy and even the latest, Radium treatments! Even though he was well in More...

3 comments like

Dec 30, 2009

Ivory rated it:

An interesting book about "health nuts" in the early 1900s...I enjoyed some of the parallels between today's nutrition/diet theory and science and those employed a hundred years ago. This is also a study of a man with the utmost confidence in his own ideas and principles, which do rise to the level of being a fault. The book brings us to an era of developing medical knowledge and fast-growing theories about how food, booze and sex may or may not cure or worsen one's physical ailments More...

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Dec 21, 2007

Tracey rated it:

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...

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Jan 21, 2010

David rated it:

T.C. Boyle is one of my favorite authors. Give me any of his awesome short story collections, point me to the nearest armchair, and I'm a happy camper for the rest of the afternoon. I mean, the guy is hilarious, he can spin a mean yarn, and his writing chops are impressive.

Oddly enough though, his track record for longer fiction is distinctly spotty. Some of his novels are well worth checking out ("The Tortilla Curtain", "East is East", "Talk Talk", " More...

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Jun 27, 2007

Andy rated it:

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...

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Jan 05, 2011

Brian rated it:

8/6/01 - 6/10

The Road to Wellville is about John Harvey Kellogg and the fitness craze in the early 1900s. I had heard that T.C. Boyle was a good writer who wrote in a humorous style. I was pretty disappointed in this book. It was well written, but not very humorous like I expected. The characters were kind of bland, and I really didn't care what (if anything) happened to them.

T.C. Boyle Site

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Sep 17, 2009

Jeff rated it:

Found a copy at Goodwill for 50c. Was pleased to find that the book had a far less prurient emphasis than the movie (albeit I walked out during the Handhabung Therapeutik scene, so can't comment on the last half.) As the story is set in and around the Sanitarium of John Harvey Kellogg in 1900s Battle Creek, Michigan, I'd been curious to read it while studying at the foot of Loma Linda's (CA) Sanitarium Hill, but never bought that copy in Redlands.

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Feb 09, 2009

Marni rated it:

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.

1 comment like

Jul 01, 2010

Swathi rated it:

The book reflected alot of the weird diets and cult ideas that have happened recently. It shows how easy some people are to the new health crazes. I enjoyed the fact that it was set in the past. THe research seems to be well done and is reflected in much of the environment in the book. I found some of the treatments entertaining and others down right desturbing (Way too many enemas). I did like the radium reference.

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Aug 18, 2009

Ruth rated it:

Fun read! I had no idea about the history behind the breakfast cereal world of Kellogs, Post etc. Kellog had a sort of "re-hab" in Michigan for wealthy, unhappy people. This book follows the stories of several of the residents, and a sub plot details the scandalous world of the breakfast cereal industry and borders on being a thriller. Very cool book by a wit of a writer.

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Jun 15, 2009

Angela rated it:

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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Aug 13, 2011

Derek rated it:

Boyle is a modern-day Dickens! His language is sumptuous; and his plots weave multiple threads, exuberantly exposing all human frailties. The Road to Wellville, which I've just re-read, is one of his best. Here, those with a quick-fix disposition (get rich quick, get slim quick, get fit quick) are duped and exploited by con-men, charlatans and the self-righteous, headed by Dr Kellogg himself. A joy!

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Jun 23, 2009

Sonia rated it:

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.

1 comment like

Oct 15, 2011

Tamara rated it:

I've tried many times to read T.C. Boyle, and while I find his stories and novels humorous, I also find them lacking. I feel like every character is shown at a distance, and I can't feel close to any of them. To be honest, I don't often CARE what happens to them. I guess this is the state of modern writing. It's full of irony and satire, but short on real connections. I'll go back to my classics.

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