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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
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This big but nimble novel, by the author of the well-received
Dress Lodger (2000), is absolutely compelling in its swift satire, yet readers will also respond to its deep sympathies for "well-foibled" individuals. The setting is the little Virginia town of Three Chimneys, which has just experienced a record-setting event: the multiple births of 11 infants to a young, unsophisticated couple artificially helped in their pursuit of fertility. National focus on the little burg is enhanced with the visit of presidential candidate Adams Brooke. One avid supporter of Brooke is local cheese maker Margaret Prickett, whose dairy farm is in financial distress; what Margaret appreciates in Brooke's candidacy is his avid support of the small farmer. But as the weeks go on, and as the babies begin to die, the townspeople, to make themselves look good again, endeavor to take a giant cheese, created by Margaret, to Washington, D.C., to duplicate an act that apparently happened during Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Human nature exposed at its rawest--and most entertaining.
Brad HooperCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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