All Shall Be Well, and All Shall Be Well, and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well [Hardcover]

Tod Wodicka (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 29, 2008

Meet Burt Hecker: a mead-drinking, tunic-wearing medieval re-enactor from upstate New York. He prefers oat gruel to French fries because potatoes were unavailable in Europe before 1200 AD; and, at war with the modern world, he enjoys hosting large-scale re-enactments at the Victorian bed and breakfast he calls home.

But Burt has some serious problems. After an incident involving the New York State police and an illegally borrowed car, Burt is forced to join a local music therapy workshop to manage his anger. He gallantly accompanies the group to Germany for a festival celebrating the music of the visionary saint Hildegard von Bingen--but he has no plan to return home. His real destination is Prague: he must find his estranged son Tristan, who, he believes, has lost his way in the Bohemian city.

As we move between past and present, the tragic details of Burt's life are gradually revealed: the recent death of his beloved wife; the circumstances that separate him from his children; his complicated relationship with his mother-in-law. And we begin to understand, with heart-wrenching clarity, Burt's eccentric and poignant devotion to a time other than one's own.

Wildly inventive and mesmerizing, Tod Wodicka's debut is a modern-day Arthurian quest that introduces one of the most winning oddball characters to come along in years.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A man displaced anchors Wodicka's funny, poignant and historically canny debut, previously published in Britain. With the death of his beloved wife, Kitty, 63-year-old Burt Hecker sells the Queens Falls, N.Y., B&B he and his wife ran and heads to Germany to reinvent himself as a medieval re-enactor with a troupe of chanters for the 900th anniversary of the birthday of Hildegard von Bingen. Burt, a dedicated member of the Confraternity of Times Lost Regained, never strays Out of Period (OOP), wearing a tunic and drinking homemade mead; derailed emotionally, he is estranged from his two grown children—June, who is on the verge of single motherhood and wants to return home but doesn't know her father has sold the inn, and Tristan, a brilliant Juilliard dropout who moved to Poland to reattach himself to the Lemko roots of his emigrant grandmother and now headlines at a Prague jazz club with a group of folk musicians. With the help of family lawyer Lonna Katsav, Burt attempts a détente with his resentful children. Burt's cutting wit and intelligence comprise the novel's intellectual center, while his unfettered love for Kitty gives it its massive heart. (Jan.)
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From The New Yorker

Burt Hecker, a.k.a. Eckbert Attquiet, is a medieval reënactor and misfit from upstate New York, whose nose is a dead ringer for that of the rhinophyma victim in Ghirlandaio’s "Portrait of an Elderly Man with His Son," a miniature copy of which Burt carries in his pouch. As the novel opens, Burt is in Germany, at a nine-hundredth-birthday party for Hildegard von Bingen, but he is soon off to Prague in search of his estranged son. Every word of Burt’s narration shows his desperate state of mind: "The window wipers smear stars of exploded insect into gray frowns." The climax occurs in a heartbreaking, hilarious flashback that dramatizes Burt’s need to escape into the past, as his charismatic wife is dying and a well-meaning neighbor cuts off his supply of home-brewed mead.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (January 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375424733
• ISBN-13: 978-0375424731
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1 x 8.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,416,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Glens Falls, NY in 1976. Raised in nearby Queenbury. Graduated from the University of Manchester in Manchester, UK.

Currently living in Berlin and working on his second novel for Pantheon, THE HOUSEHOLD SPIRIT. Tod's writing has appeared in the Guardian, The New Statesman and To Hell With Journals.

ALL SHALL BE WELL; AND ALL SHALL BE WELL; AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS SHALL BE WELL is his first novel.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars re-enacting a life, January 29, 2008

By 

Richard Cumming "dick" (the heartland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Shall Be Well, and All Shall Be Well, and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well (Hardcover)

Burt Hecker is 66 years old and his two kids won't give him the time of day. Son moved to Europe. Daughter to California. Burt, a widower, has been left alone at his late wife's Victorian bed and breakfast in New York to drown his sorrows in home brewed honey wine.

Burt has been a lousy father. Was he also a crappy husband? He can't remember. Too much pain and drink have dulled the edges of his memories. Tod Wodicka takes readers on an extended flashback to the events that brought Burt to this dismal place.

Burt may not remember his own past because he is living in the imaginary past of the 13th century. He doesn't drive or consume foods or use products that did not exist 700 years ago. His excessive tippling has left him confused.

Wodicka has written the story of Burt's resurrection as a person, a father, and a grieving spouse. 'T is a beautiful thing. An impressive debut!

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Succeeds in marrying the offbeat with the commonplace, February 12, 2008

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: All Shall Be Well, and All Shall Be Well, and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well (Hardcover)

Kooky, quirky characters are fun to read. But they often fade away when the book ends unless there is a real solidity underneath any absurdity. It is not easy to write a character who is at once silly and dead serious, and even more difficult to place that character in a suitable tale. First-time novelist Tod Wodicka, however, has done just that. In the memorably titled ALL SHALL BE WELL; AND ALL SHALL BE WELL; AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS SHALL BE WELL, readers meet Burt Hecker, a widowed eccentric who lives as if it is 1105 and not 2008.

Years ago Burt founded the Confraternity of Times Lost Regained, which allowed him not only to live out his medieval fantasies but to do so with like-minded people. His friends and family put up with his eccentricities, understanding them as harmless for the most part. Only his mother-in-law, the stern Lemko nationalist Anna Bibko, called it ridiculous. His daughter, June, rebelled through an interest in science fiction and geology, but Burt's sensitive son Tristan, a natural musician, joined his father in the world of medieval reenactment.

However, since his wife's death from cancer two years ago, Burt has loosened his already-tenuous hold on reality. He can no longer maintain the family's Victorian bed and breakfast, spends his days dressed in dirty tunics drinking mead and is estranged from his two adult children. After absconding with his friend's car (which he did not know how to drive), he is sentenced to an anger management treatment. The group he ends up in is a women's medieval chant workshop led by the sympathetic Tivona Henry. Tivona takes the group to Germany for a conference on Hildegard von Bingen, a medieval mystic and composer to whom Burt relates on a deeply personal level. The trip to Europe provides an escape from the scene of his wife's death and the opportunity to track down Tristan, who, it turns out, is somewhere in Prague. Facing head-on Burt's depression and drinking problem as well as family secrets and dysfunction, the Heckers must decide if they can be a family again and what family really means.

Wodicka's debut is original and highly readable but provides no easy answers. Readers will surely come to care for the egocentric and damaged Burt and his grieving family. Still, the author never promises that all shall be well for them. In this way, the book is at once inventive and realistic. This is a very confident first novel; the characters are complex, the story is rich and the settings are lively --- and all of it is written with a smart and graceful hand.

ALL SHALL BE WELL succeeds in marrying the offbeat with the commonplace. Moving effortlessly between past and present, Wodicka tells the compelling story of a man at once both simple and quite complicated. While the details of Burt Hecker's life are unique, his tale --- of origins, destinations and the path between the two --- is universal.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars All Shall Be Well And All Shall Be Well And All Manner Of Things Shall Be Well, April 15, 2008

By 

Elizabeth Waronker (LA, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: All Shall Be Well, and All Shall Be Well, and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well (Hardcover)

I bought this book on the basis of the great reviews of my fellow-Amazonians and the NY Times, however, I found it heavily written (i.e. "The mirror hung on the wall like a scream") and just not that enthralling. There are great passages, such as the protagonist's cross-europe drive with a kooky Brazilian, but more often the scenes feel forced and fake. I wanted to laugh, to be pulled in, but I simply wasn't - I didn't believe any of the characters and I certainly didn't believe the main character could be so deeply involved with medieval re-enactment. He appears mentally ill more than anything else. I'd give my copy away to a friend, but I don't want to waste their time too. To me, this book reads like an over-striving first effort.