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The Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman
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The Dress Lodger (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Sheri Holman

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2671121,065 (3.48)39
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Ballantine Books (2001), Edition: 1st Ballentine Books ed, Paperback, 320 pages

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What attracted me to this book was its title. A book about Cheese? i thumbed thru a few paages & found the writing was great. The introduction, where a woman gives birth to 11 babies seemed a bit much, but once the main characters appeared, Margaret, whoe husband has left her but she is still struggling to run their dairy farm the traditional way, Polly, her teen-age daughter who wants to save the farm, but discovers first love with someone completely unsuitable, & August, the only son of a family of preachers who main pleasure in life is to pose as Thomas Jefferson all of whom live in a small town just outside the political whirl of Washington DC. The story is set in the present, as another reviewer pointed out - it could hardly be more present day, and all of our hopes, pleasures & foibles are present with all their consequences, some unintended but all entertaining. ( )
  MarianV | May 28, 2009 |
This book has lots going for it but the cover isn't one of them. It is ugly. This book is full of details about cows, cheese making, and small towns. It was also very prescient. I read it just when the economy started going south and diary farmers are in trouble in a big way and selling off their herds for pennies on the dollar, the Octamom had just delivered her eight babies, and their was a populist running for President. It is a story about communities and how they function as much as it is about cheese. This is a nice slow easy gentle read. The central story has well developed characters and is somewhat of a domestic drama. However, that story gets lost in lots of other subplots. The separate plot lines come together at the end but not in an obvious way. This book moves too slowly and could have benefited from some better editing to tighten up the story lines and make them more concise. It is one big messy kind of thing - just like life. ( )
  benitastrnad | Mar 26, 2009 |
I was thoroughly entertained by this book, a conglomeration of daily grind, humor, horror - a lot like life. It's a coming-of-age story about eighth grader Polly Marvel in love with her history teacher. It's also a coming-of-age for her mother Margaret, divorced and desperately trying to hold on to her family dairy farm. It is the story of Leland Vaughn, the local Episcopal priest, a most persuasive man who finds himself appalled by the outcomes of his persuasion.
Their lives intertwine with others in their small town as everybody in the novel sees what he has given his life to and learns what is ultimately important. ( )
  LizzieD | Mar 4, 2009 |
strikingly aprapo as election politics permeate small town life ( )
  aletheia21 | Oct 5, 2008 |
fabulous thoughtful delightful charming clever book...packaging and back cover blurb all wrong ...looks like sweet charming countryside tales and its much more than that!
  lauraCz | Apr 7, 2008 |
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Epigraph
Grave: A place where the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student.
     -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
...the heart is the beginning of life ... it is the household divinity.
     -- William Harvey, The Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals
Dedication
For my mother, my best friend.
To my daughter, Elizabeth Hanover Redmond, who allowed me to see it from the other side
First words
The boys down on the Low Quay know a hundred ways to sell bad fish.
Like a dog unaware it was about to be put down, Manda Frank's cottage sat in the long shade of her new house.
Quotations
"Maybe disillusionment is the key to growing up..."
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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Book description
Beware the second book description! The Mammoth Cheese is the brainchild of Leland Vaughn, not his son August!

Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0871139006, Hardcover)

Sheri Holman's The Mammoth Cheese is the Mississippi River of novels. It winds along through most of the great themes of American fiction (tradition vs. innovation, the weight of the past, the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, the rifts between parents and children, men and women), picking up bits of history along the way, and carrying you wherever Holman wishes. The opening pages introduce at least 15 characters (not including the 11 premature babies born to dog trainer Manda Frank), a rough outline of the history of Three Chimneys, Virginia, and more information on small-farm cheesemaking than you might ever have thought you'd would want to learn, let alone absorb with fascination. Along with its moving themes, the pleasures of this novel are in Holman's grasp of human (and not only human) nature, and her gift for expressing this through unexpected details of daily life--that the cows in the local dairy give more milk when Sinatra's playing; that the dirty secret under an eighth-grade girl's mattress is Bride Magazine. Her inconspicuous flashes of verbal brilliance may go unnoticed by all but the most observant readers, but they lend sparkle to a complex and ambitious novel. --Regina Marler

(retrieved from Amazon Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:23:38 -0500)

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