The Road to Wellville by T.C. Boyle Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Road to Wellville
Book Review: The road to what???
Summary: 1 Stars
After seeing the movie a few years ago (and thinking it was quite odd) I decided to take a shot at the book. At first it started out great and I was really interested in the storyline. The idea of 4 time a day enemas and cleansing the colon had me hooked! However then the book got going and I realized there was more to the story than the cleansing of the colon. About halfway through the book I started to get bored. I took a look at my to-be-read book pile and longed for something else. WELLVILLE did not have a plot that I could see. The book was all 'story' and very little climax. Once I finished it I was disappointed and glad for it to be over with at the same time.
Book Review: To Health!
Summary: 4 Stars
In the Road to Wellville, Boyle has written a story that is more than interesting. The characters are all searching for the key to good health; a fountain of health if you will. This is something to which so many of us can relate, and for those who can't, you'll be able to once you've read this book. The writing is good, and the story is so bizarrely real that you'll actually want to (god forbid!) go to a library and research the history of cereal. This book is an excellent read and I recommend it to anyone.Even if it doesn't have the key to physical health, I promise this book will improve your mental health! Exercise your mind and pick this one up!
Book Review: Very entertaining, but no match for "The Tortilla Curtain"
Summary: 4 Stars
Though nowhere near as profound as Boyle's magnum opus, The Tortilla Curtain, The Road to Wellville is an extremely entertaining novel with an unclear message.As best I can tell, the book is an indictment of orthodoxy and charlatanism, perhaps equating the 2 to the pitfalls of religious dogma.
Book Review: Wellville & Kellog
Summary: 3 Stars
This is an historical novel about John Kellog, Battle Creek, Michigan, and the wacky health institute he ran there. Kellog comes across as a martinette advocating risky diets and enemas to patients. Boyle can be pretty funny at times as he skewers Kellog and his shinanigans, and, of course, the arm of his satire reaches right up to today and the health fad industry, much of which is just as nutty as anything Kellog was advocating. Besides this novel, other books by Boyle I've read are RIVEN ROCK and WORLD'S END, and I've found that of the three this is the only one that actually tells a story. I did not care for the other two much at all.Book Review: What If Fiction!
Summary: 1 Stars
I believe the author of the Road to Wellville would have accomplished a lot more if he had written a historical, instead of a fictional account of the BattleCreek Sanitarium.Dr. Kellogg did not DIE at age seventy of a heart attack, but lived until 1943 and died at the age of 91 years. having been born in 1852.