The Road to Wellville

Picked it up to pass time in an airport. When I got back to school (where Boyle teaches, by the way), I just didn't care anymore.

Read this when it came out (20 some years ago), and then again recently. I liked it a lot more this time. There isn't a whole lot of depth to any of the characters; they just seem to each have a list of quirks or characteristics ("anti-sex", "lacks backbone", "bored rich girl looking for excitement", etc.). One character, George Kellogg, one of the many many adopted children of Dr. Kellogg, stands out in that his motivations are completely unexplained. Neither we nor the Doctor can figure out why he is just plain bad. He serves to stir things up, and I'm guessing that's why he's there. But a little more explanation would have made him less obviously a plot device, and more of a real person. Once in a while we get some backstory on a character, but mostly we have no clue as where these people are coming from. What is driving Kellogg's missionary zeal? He's a man possessed. Why? What's he got against sex?

The first time I read this, I was a young lad, so my impressions were bound to be different. But I do recall that it seemed Boyle was just plain laughing at all his characters, and that bothered me. Now I think I wouldn't have had that impression if he had made the main characters, at least, a bit more than robots. You really don't get any insight into why, for instance, Eleanor is the way she is, or even what she wants. I assume she's just a bored rich girl looking for a bit of fun. Why is Will such a milquetoast? What does he see in Eleanor? Everything's on the surface, despite the third-person writing. We hear their thoughts, but no light is shed on their inner hearts. Now I'm reading "East is East," also by Boyle, and a similar lack of depth/empathy is present. I guess that's just how he writes.

The book does seem to spend too much time on Will's treatment. It seems to go on forever, long past the point of the reader's interest in the strange procedures used. May as well have called it "The Road to Enemaville" or something.

Overall, a fun book. Recommended for fans of "Ragtime," historical fiction, and silly medical ideas. ( )

She was even then undergoing one of Dr. Kellogg's newest and - if you believed his self-puffery - most efficacious cures for chlorosis and a host of other conditions, from erysipelas and obesity to ingrown toenails: inhaling radium emanations. Radium, as Will understood it, was some sort of stone that gave off healing rays or vibrations. The Curies has discovered it, along with polonium, and won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics in acknowledgment of their achievement in isolating this miraculous substance. Dr. Kellogg had picked right up on it. A stone. A healing stone. It almost sounded pagan.

This book is set in Battle Creek, Michigan in 1907 and comprises three entwined stories. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg subjects the wealthy patients at the famed Battle Creek Sanatorium to a strict vegetarian diet and exercise regime, along with a wide variety of treatments, some of which, like poor Ida Muntz's radium therapy, could be doing them more harm than good. Although he is revered by most of his staff and patients Dr. Kellogg has an altogether more difficult relationship with his adopted son George who hates him and everything he stands for.

Charles Ossining comes to town intending to set up a breakfast cereal company, only to discover that every man and his dog has had the same idea. Charles and his business partner, a conman named Bender, join forces with George so that they can use the famous Kellogg name on their new breakfast cereal, while George is only to happy to be involved in a scheme that will embarrass his father.

On the train into Battle Creek, Charles meets Will and Eleanor Lightbody, who are planning a long stay at the sanatorium. Will is immediately put on a regime of enemas and a very restricted diet to treat his 'autointoxication' and sort out his terrible stomach problems, and is upset to find out that he and Eleanor are in separate rooms on different floors. Dr. Kellogg is strongly against the debilitating effects of sexual intercourse and prefers to keep married couples apart as much as possible, so they are not even seated together in the dining room. Eleanor, who has stayed at the sanatorium before, is much happier with this arrangement and starts to spend a lot of time with her handsome doctor.

An amusing and enjoyable story set at a fascinating time and place in American history. ( )

Overlong. ( )

This novel was an interesting read. The patients in the sanitarium are interesting to get to know as are the Kelloggs. ( )