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Loading... The Virgin Cure (2011)by Ami McKay
   None No current Talk conversations about this book.   BooksInMirror | Feb 19, 2024 |   ) chailatte | Feb 5, 2024 | ) BethOwl | Jan 24, 2024 | My only complaint is that there are excerpts throughout the chapters that I felt made the pacing a bit odd and oftentimes didn't really add anything to the story being told. I think it would have been better if these excerpts were put in the beginning or end of the chapters so as not to disturb the pacing. Overall, I quite liked this book, but the pacing issues kept me from loving it. ( ) LynnMPK | Nov 22, 2023 | I liked the fake(?) newspaper articles sprinkled throughout the book and the sidebar footnotes and detailed descriptions of ladies fashion from old issues of Harper's Bazar. A lot of reviewers complained about how the author left a lot of loose ends in the story. Somehow I missed those and wasn't bothered by it, I guess. I enjoyed the book very much. It wasn't a great piece of literature, mind you, but it held my interest. I wish I lived in New York so I could run right out and see the Tenement Museum and the site of the Stuyvesant Pear Tree and a Dime Museum and other peculiarities. ( ) Jinjer | Jul 19, 2021 |
 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. Belongs to Publisher SeriesDistinctions
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML: From #1 international bestselling author Ami McKay comes The Virgin Cure, the story of a young girl abandoned and forced to fend for herself in the poverty and treachery of post-Civil War New York City. McKay, whose debut novel The Birth House made headlines around the world, returns with a resonant tale inspired by her own great-great-grandmother's experiences as a pioneer of women's medicine in nineteenth-century New York. In a powerful novel that recalls the evocative fiction Anita Shreve, Annie Proulx, and Joanne Harris, Ami McKay brings to light the story of early, forward-thinking social warriors, creating a narrative that readers will find inspiring, poignant, adventure-filled, and utterly unforgettable. .No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing AuthorAmi McKay is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.81)
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