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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
From AudioFile
This quirky novel will remind listeners of a John Irving novel with its wildly diverse characters acting in extreme situations amid a vivid setting. Laural Merlington informs the plot with her skillful ability to convey the conflicting emotions and self-doubts of each character. There's the new mother of 11 babies, born of fertility treatments; the minister who talked her into having all of them; and his son, August Vaughn, farmhand and longtime secret admirer of Margaret Prickett. And it's Margaret who creates the mammoth cheese in an effort to save her family's century-old dairy farm. It sounds Dickensian, but the novel unfolds cleanly, revealing a beautifully crafted story and vibrant characters. D.G. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
