Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of 2025!

Summary and Reviews of Wickett's Remedy by Myla Goldberg

Wickett's Remedy by Myla Goldberg

Wickett's Remedy

A Novel

by Myla Goldberg
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • First Published:
  • Sep 20, 2005, 336 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Oct 2006, 368 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

Through narrative, authentic newspaper clippings, and fictional correspondence, the author of Bee Season offers an intimate view of the life of Lydia Kilkenny, a shop clerk and daughter of Irish immigrants in South Boston in the early 20th century.'

In a multidimensional, intricately wrought narrative, Myla Goldberg leads us back to Boston in the early part of the twentieth century and into two completely captivating worlds. One is that of Lydia, an Irish American shopgirl with bigger aspirations than your average young woman from South Boston. She seems to be well on her way to the life she has dreamed of when she marries Henry Wickett, a shy medical student and the scion of a Boston Brahmin family. However, soon after their wedding, Henry abruptly quits medical school to create a mail-order patent medicine called Wickett's Remedy, and just as Lydia begins to adjust to her husband's new vocation, the infamous Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918 begins its deadly sweep across the world, irrevocably changing their lives.

In a world turned almost unrecognizable by swift and sudden tragedy, Lydia finds herself working as a nurse in an experimental ward dedicated to understanding the raging epidemic—through the use of human subjects.

Meanwhile, a parallel narrative explores the world of QD Soda, the illegitimate offspring of Wickett's Remedy, stolen away by Henry Wickett's one-time business partner Quentin Driscoll, who goes about transforming it into a soft drink empire.

Throughout the novel we hear from a chorus of other voices who offer a running commentary from the book's margins, playing off the ongoing narrative and cleverly illuminating the slippery interplay of perception and memory. Based on years of research and evoking actual events, Wickett's Remedy perfectly captures the texture of the times and brings a colorful cast of characters vividly to life—none more so than Lydia, a heroine as winning and appealing as Eliza, the beloved spelling champion of Bee Season.

With dazzling dexterity, Goldberg has fashioned a novel that beautifully combines the intimate and the epic. Wickett's Remedy announces her arrival as a major novelist.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. A rich historical re-creation whose energy and ingenuity evoke memories of EL Doctorow's classic Ragtime, Stephen Milhauser's Pulitzer Prize winner Martin Dressler and Thomas McMahon's forgotten picturesque mini masterpiece McKay's Bees. A fine novel....And a quantum leap forward for the gifted Goldberg.

Library Journal - Jyna Scheeren
Starred Review. An epic story that is sure to become a classic .. Like Bee Season, this sorrowful, humorous and tender novel utterly satisfies. Congratulations to Goldberg on another masterpiece.

Booklist - Joanne Wilkinson
With its warm, involving story line and intrinsically interesting subject matter, this is sure to be popular with the book-club crowd.

Publishers Weekly
.... as well-researched, polished and poignant as the book is, Goldberg never quite locks in her characters' mindsets, and sometimes seems adrift amid period detritus.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Myla Goldberg

Myla Goldberg is the author of the bestselling Bee Season; an essay collection, Time’s Magpie, which explores all her favorite places in Prague, where she lived for a year in the early nineties; and Wickett’s Remedy which grew out of her fascination with the 1918 influenza epidemic. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, cartoonist Jason Little,  and their daughter.

Did you know?

  • Despite the misleading name, the "Spanish Flu" epidemic of 1918-1919 was first identified in early March 1918 at a US military camp in Kansas; by October it had spread worldwide.  By the time it died out 18 months later it is estimated that 2.5-5% of the world's population had died and 20% had been effected.  ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Wickett's Remedy, try these:

  • Fever jacket

    Fever

    by Mary Beth Keane

    Published 2014

    About this book

    More by this author

    A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.

  • The Given Day jacket

    The Given Day

    by Dennis Lehane

    Published 2009

    About this book

    More by this author

    Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane's long-awaited eighth novel unflinchingly captures the political and social unrest of a nation caught at the crossroads between past and future.

We have 7 read-alikes for Wickett's Remedy, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Myla Goldberg
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: City of Night Birds
    City of Night Birds
    by Juhea Kim
    City of Night Birds opens in the present day with a flight to St. Petersburg—a homecoming for ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
Babylonia
by Costanza Casati
From the author of the bestselling Clytemnestra comes another intoxicating excursion into ancient history. When kings fall, queens rise.
Book Jacket
The Memory Library
by Kate Storey
Journey through the pages of this heartwarming novel, where hope, friendship and second chances are written in the margins.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Secret History of the Rape Kit
    by Pagan Kennedy

    The story of the woman who kicked off a feminist revolution in forensics, and then vanished into obscurity.

  • Book Jacket

    Going Home
    by Tom Lamont

    Going Home is a sparkling, funny, bighearted story of family and what happens when three men take charge of a toddler following an unexpected loss.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win My Darling Boy

My Darling Boy by John Dufresne

The story of of a man whose son collapses into addiction and vanishes into the chaotic netherworld of southern Florida.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

Y C L a H T W but Y C M H D

and be entered to win..