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Loading... The Virgin Cure: A Novelby Ami McKay
None. Not nearly as good as The Birth House. Quite a disappointment by comparison, in fact. The story follows Moth, a kid of a Gypsy mother who sells her daughter out and the kid eventually ends up being groomed for prostitution. I'm not sure why so many pages are devoted to the pre-Miss Everett era...maybe to prove there was little other hope for Moth? Anyway, I was thinking there'd be more into the 'profession' for Moth than there was. Really, aside from Moth being so young and the aspect of syphilius (which only really comes at the end) the whole thing is a bit glamourized and attractive. The book's format -- "margin notes" and news clippings, plus Dr Sadie's diary entries -- is similar to the format I just read in Wickett's Remedy but not nearly as effective as in Wickett's Remedy. The margin notes were usually just scientific facts and nore relevant or even interesting. (In Wickett's, they added a layer to the story.) There's also no personality in Dr. Sadie. She's a detached doctor who does what is good and kind, but is without emotion otherwise. I found all the characters except maybe Mae to be rather flat. Actually, I would consider this book almost YA, though that may be because the POV is 12 or 13 year old Moth. Skip this one and read The Birth House or Wickett's Remedy instead. (  ) LDVoorberg | Apr 7, 2013 |  Set just after the Civil War, the story follows the life of a young girl, Moth. When her father abandons her and her mother, Moth’s existence becomes even more precarious until her mother sells her as a servant to a woman who abuses. When another servant helps to free her, Moth finds her mother gone and herself on the street with nowhere to go until she meets Mae who takes her to a prostitute trainer where her virginity will be sold. However, the interest of the female doctor allows Moth to see another way of taking care of herself. A clear look at the issues of women and poverty but with a hopeful aspect of rising above the circumstances. (  ) 4leschats | Apr 6, 2013 | (based on Canadian edition, read September 2011) McKay knocks this, her 2nd novel, out of the park! Her prose is tight and haunting - giving us settings and characters one can see, hear and nearly touch. I feel this story sheds a light on a time and era in NYC's history of which little is known. (4-stars in 2011) May, 2012: Re-reading U.S. uncorrected proof, for work. 5-stars in 2012. This story holds up after a re-read and I fell in love with Moth even more. Which I didn't think was possible. The supporting characters are well done and i felt just as strongly that McKay's writing evokes the senses and puts the reader squarely in the time of the story. (  ) BookishJoJo | Apr 5, 2013 | This is a book I will not read. I have to tread on thin ice here since my last 'will not read' review http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/442722180 was hidden (although probably not by the author's request. By someone who calls themselves A Hole, I was told). So thin ice it is. I read a review of this book that made me think I would enjoy it so I looked up the book page and whoever wrote the synopsis had written the ENTIRE story out. A 45-line synopsis of the story indeed! A blurb would have sufficed. So if I bought the book at $25.99 (it isn't available in the US in paperback) I would know exactly what I would be getting, from the 'heroine's' unfortunate birth and upbringing through her introduction to and career on the streets through to her expected redemption-with-difficulties. All I would be getting if I paid out is the fleshing out of this story with details and dialogue. If this was great literature, if this was a long saga, that much detail would be unacceptable, how much more so in what is described by a friend in her review, "This was a quick enjoyable read, pure if predictable storytelling"? Perhaps I am in a minority of not wanting to know the entire story before I buy a book, of feeling that a blurb is quite sufficient, but to my mind, the synopsis writer has not done the author a good service at all. (  ) Petra.Xs | Apr 2, 2013 | This was a quick enjoyable read, pure if predictable storytelling. I actually most enjoyed the edges and back of the story. Some of the Goodreads reviews complained about the sidebar footnotes, but I really liked those, how they acknowledged the unusual, the unexplained and the ephemera of a time past that we don't understand and have little knowledge of. It was sort of like reading in a story in a museum, and these sidebars were the captions for the exhibits. The style of them, at the side of the page slightly indenting the text, was easier to read and less disruptive to the flow then standard footnotes in a tiny font at the bottom of the page. It was fascinating to read of the myriad details of the tough lives of these 19th century New Yorkers. One of my favourite scenes was right at the beginning of the book (p6) -- it was like a long tracking shot through crowded raucous tenements, being shown the thieves, the mamas, the flies and rotten meat, the laughter and games. ...Boys grew into guttersnipes, then pickpockets, then roughs. They roamed the streets living for rare, fist-sized chunks of coal from ash barrels or the sweet hiss of beans running from the burlap bags they wounded with their knives at Tompkins Market. They ran down ladies for handouts and swarmed gentlemen for watches and chains. Kid Yaller, Pie-Eater, Bag o'Bones, Slobbery Tom, Four-Fingered Nick. Their names were made from body parts and scars, bragging rights and bad luck... It had a wonderful rhythm and momentum. ( ) BCbookjunky | Mar 31, 2013 |
 As with her first novel, McKay packs The Virgin Cure to the brim with ephemera (silk walking suits, evening toilette, tear catchers, and Circassian hair oils), local legends, and wives’ tales (the title comes from the popular belief at the time that having sex with a virgin cured illness).  Dickens in the brothel..Ami McKay’s first bestselling novel was a trove of period ephemera, her own narrative playing off juicy snippets from newspapers, magazine ads and herbalist lore. It was a winning formula that she continues to favour in a new novel that also shares thematic territory with The Birth House....Moth’s lot in life is undeserved and her longings universal. You’ll hope that she escapes with her dignity and her health, and you’ll want her to feel safe, have comfort and be loved. In spite of the odds stacked against her, she deserves it. Moth is the central character of Ami McKay’s new novel The Virgin Cure, the long-awaited follow-up to her 2006 debut, The Birth House. It’s a powerful novel, rooted in the same elements that made The Birth House both critically lauded and a bestseller — including a vivid historical realism and compelling, well-drawn characters — but with a significantly darker approach and subject matter....One of McKay’s gifts and skills as a writer is her ability to utterly immerse the reader in her fictional world....That resignation, and those fleeting moments of care, in a world of obliviousness and pain, combine to make The Virgin Cure a powerful, affecting novel. Fans of McKay’s bestselling novel The Birth House are going to love The Virgin Cure, her second story about an unusual girl living in a precise time and place. This time it’s 12-year-old Moth, the daughter of a heartless gypsy fortune teller, navigating the mean streets of Manhattan’s Lower East Side around the Bowery in 1871—that’s before galleries, boutique hotels and a Daniel Boulud restaurant moved in....the author falls short with her heroine’s voice: Moth lacks depth, and besides her turbulent existence, there’s nothing particularly profound about her. Still, it’s difficult not to swiftly turn the pages of The Virgin Cure, if only to discover how Moth realizes her ultimate revenge fantasy. The Virgin Cure, which tells the story of Moth, a young girl who grows up in severe poverty in 19th century New York. Readers won’t soon forget Moth, who is sold by her mother into life as a lady’s maid at the age of 12....This is a lovely novel, written in a style that is both clean and subtle. McKay’s voices are true; her characters sympathetic. Although Moth’s story is not easy or painless, I’m certain readers will take to The Virgin Cure just as they did The Birth House.
References to this work on external resources.
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Set on the streets of Lower Manhattan in 1871, The Virgin Cure is the story of Moth, a girl abandoned by her father and raised by a mother telling fortunes to the city's desperate women. One summer night, twelve-year-old Moth is pulled from her bed and sold as a servant to a finely dressed woman. It is this betrayal suffered at the hands of her own mother that changes her life forever.… (more)
Ami McKay is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.
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