Customer Reviews

All Shall Be Well; and All Shall Be Well; and All Manner of Things Shall Be Well

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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!

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

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.

All Shall Be Well is an exceptionally brilliant, uniquely human and utterly enjoyable debut from author Tod Wodicka. Long after the last page has been read the words, images and rich characters accompany me like familiar shadows from which I seek no release. This is no small achievement in the midst of a literary landscape upon which altars are built in masses for the mediocre and in which the most precious gems often remain obscure, neglected and hidden. It was clever to cloak this intelligent, soul-filled book in such a quirky and fascinating tale.

It is the story of Eckburt Attquiet (known in the mundane world as Burt Hecker) founder of a medieval reenactment society extraordinaire and master mead brewer whose penchant for living history and ability to blind out everything which does not figure into the life he has created precipitates the implosion of his family. It is a bittersweet tale of the reality of present intertwined with and redolent of a golden yesterday which was perceived as ideal for him alone. When a tragic stroke of fate removes the one person whose life and presence underpins and makes plausibel the structure of family, the hidden depths of dysfunction, resentment and sense of betrayal come unabated and relentlessly to the surface. This sends Burt on a journey to another continent which becomes the proverbial longest journey a man must take... "the eighteen inches from his head to his heart." The story is so unique and rich that to say more about the specific story line would not do it justice.

The narrative is tightly woven. His writing style is well-rounded and mature allowing the colors and textures to be woven around the underlying structure while keeping the tension balanced and taut. Its movement is constant often taking unexpected turns while effortlessly navigating the changes in time, perspective and place without abandoning or leaving undeveloped a thread once begun. All of the characters (even minor ones) and the relationships between them are very well-developed, deep and as complex as life itself. Each one is a "real" person showing all of the pitfalls and graces, the uncompromising paradox of being human... our capacity to misjudge, to lose ourselves in our own perspectives and to follow an ineffable and elusive longing which remains ever just out of reach be it for an unattainable harmony or a place to belong. To have good hearts which in spite of (or more likely exactly due to) that manage to ruin everything in a simple, self-preoccupied blindness.

His portrayal of the broad spectrum of Hildegard devotees from the lithe waves of the esoterica to the die-hard prophets of medieval medicine; from the self-righteous scorn of the academic medievalists to the standard bearers of traditional monasticism who try to hold the fort while distancing themselves (ever so gently) Leib und Seele from the projections and general brouhaha surrounding her cult, was concise and perceptive. His understanding of St. Hildegard's writings clearly went beyond the mere perfunctory.

I was deeply struck by the scene leading up to and the ending itself. It reminded me of what I really love about modern Japanese literature which is that it did not feel the need to tie up all the loose strings in a ending in which all things are resolved in neither a cheap harmony nor an utter catastrophe. The finely wrought tension remains beyond the last pages, just like it often is in life itself, leaving us to find a way to live with the unresolved and fragmentary of our histories and our futures.

This first novel from Wodicka exhibits wonderful comic talent and structure. The characters are unique, and certainly not your typical lead types. The aging Burt is a marvelous creation, refusing potatoes as being OOP (out of period) from his 11th century persona. The fractured family he is on a quest to reunite have their own issues. His lawyer and fellow alcoholic (although with modern vintages) steals the scenes she is in.

The mead fueled journey is certainly entertaining. The resolution comes a bit quick for my tastes - I think a longer visit in Prague (rich descriptions of that Bohemia are provided) would enhance the story.

We recently finished reading aloud ALL SHALL BE WELL; AND ALL SHALL BE WELL; AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS SHALL BE WELL, a novel by Tod Wodicka.

The novel's main character is Bert Hecker, who has retreated from life into his alter ego, Eckbert Attquiet, in the society he started, the Confraternity of Times Lost Regained. This is a medieval historical group in which members live as closely as possible (to varying degrees) as they would have in the Middle Ages. Bert is from Queens Falls, New York, where he and his wife ran The Mansion Inn, which was a B&B created in her inherited mansion. Bert has two children, Tristan and Jane, and as the novel unfolds, the reader begins to see the depth of pain and loss in Bert's life: His beloved wife has died of cancer several years before, and his children have contentious, at best, relationships with him.

The plot unfolds in two lines: a present-day (well, AD 1998) narrative, and flashbacks to varying points of Bert's life, how he met his late wife, Kitty; how he found himself with a group of Hildegard von Bingen pilgrims in Germany; how he disengaged from his life at the Mansion Inn after his wife's death; and his relationship with his mother-in-law, a militant, traditional Lemko immigrant in New York who hates Bert possibly more than his children!

There are many threads in this book and many emotional lines of inquiry. Why is Bert such a misanthrope? Why do his children despise him so? Why does his mother-in-law actively hate him? Why does he have such a giant, horrific nose? How does his wife's ethnic heritage support the narrative themes? Why does the past attract these characters so?

The writing style was engaging, because Wodicka has some interesting and poetic turns of phrase and clever metaphors that were fun. The book seemed, though, that it had been turned out quickly, as there were errors (such as the acronym for Bert's society, CTLR, having the letters sometimes juxtaposed, and the listing of the WRONG YEAR for Julian of Norwich's writings... the wrong century, actually). But the plot moved quickly and the short book was a pleasant, quick read, even aloud.

Not all of these loops are closed in the end of the book, and I won't trace the story's events for you. Bert is definitely an anti-hero, but I did hope for his--and his family's--happiness at the end of the book. This would be a good travel book (easy to pick up and put down), but I wouldn't recommend it without reservation.

You don't have to be a medieval re-enactor, or descended from Lemkos, or have a daughter who speaks Klingon to enjoy this book, but it probably helps. This twisted family tale shows how we all re-enact different scripts. To connect, throw the scripts out the window and improvise.

Tod Wodicka's 2007 book, All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well, contains the best writing I've seen (read) in years. Regardless of the story, which is compelling, the writing is superb: clean and efficient. As a writer and editor, it was with relief that I read Wodicka. Too often lately a good story, or concept, is made frustrating by mistakes and excess in writing -- something in the past corrected by editors. Either Wodicka had a great editor, or did a great job of editing himself.

As to the story: Wodicka's Burt, reminded me of Fima, a fellow in the Amos Oz novel of the same name. Both "hopeless" characters are complellingly portrayed in their unsuccessful, yet successful, way of being human. I loved them both.

My copy of the book was from out local library; I'm buying the book for gift-giving and for use in showing how "clean" writing works. Congratulations all around.

I loved this book. It surprised me with its depth and thoughtfulness. As I started reading it I thought it was going to be a humorous account of the misadventures of a man addicted to mead and medieval re-enactments. It's much weightier than that and deals very meaningfully with the pain of loss and familial healing. I highly recommend it!

I've studied medieval literature, I've seen Prague, and I've wondered what motivates moderns to retreat into re-enactment of the past as a ritual and, in extreme cases, as a way of recovering a past way of life. So, this novel, which features Burt Hecker as somebody who travels to Central Europe to find his son, who's become estranged from him after he regards his father's eccentric refusal to live as if in 1998 as exarcerbating his mother's death from cancer, appealed to me. Although the blurbs play up the "comic" aspects of its protagonist, I found this fictional account sadder, akin more to works by Walker Percy or perhaps J.F. Powers (see my reviews of all of Powers' books on Amazon) in a subtler exploration of the costs of one's moral refusal to accept the predominant culture of capitalism, consumerism, and American mass-market, branded chain store, big-box mediocrity.

Wodicka intermittently yet often admirably succeeds. His dialogue works best when he conveys Burt in his drunken helplessness, and how he talks, or does not, to his similarly dysfunctional children June and Tristram shows Wodicka's skill at articulating the frustrations of a man too hard on himself and others. Yet, as much of the story takes place in Prague, you would not know it much. The possibilities inherent in the setting remain undernourished. Lengthy intrusions about a sub-plot of his wife, Kitty, and her travels back to her mother Anna's native homeland, the WWII & Cold War-demolished Lemkovyna, also lessen the force of the plot.

As it progresses, the novel keeps going back as much as forward, and this throws off the momentum. Even the big scene of a CTLR re-enactment appears to be itself described too generally, without the necessary precision; the accounts of Prague suffer from this same lack of felt details. The prose style can be wry and witty, and in characters, more than events, the novel succeeds better on the whole.

Anna, Kitty's mother, speaks in a stage-peasant diction, but if she came to America at eight, wouldn't she have lost this affectation? Her own determination to recover her past engages us less than Burt's, and the need for abandoning the first-person narration to convey Anna's memories and those of Kitty on her trip back there diminish what had been established as the driving force of the novel: Burt's own battles with modernity and his family. We need to understand Anna's own motivation, but the complex structure of the chronology as the novel enters its later stages does spin us off in what seem detours more than main roads that lead to Prague, a fuller insight into Kitty's sickness, and a clearer realization of why Tristan has left Burt to seek out the Lemkos and then Prague. His whole character, because of his reticence, remains difficult to flesh out, however intentionally; June's own repetition of her father's immaturity works better, although here too we are limited by Burt's perspective in explaining fully her own inner torments.

As it progresses, the novel keeps going back as much as forward, and this throws off the momentum. [There's a minor mistake: Julian of Norwich, who provides the quote for the book's lovely title, gave it to us in her "shewings" or revelations of what transpired not in "AD 1234," (p. 260) but in May, 1373.] True, this divergent path reveals what we need to know to understand the isolation that has consumed Burt as of 1998, but it also keeps us one step on, two steps back, and halts the energy that would usually propel such a tale of self-understanding hard won after years of pain and misunderstanding within what's a small but fractured family dynamic.

On the other hand, there's much to admire in this compact story. This novel does not read like one written around the time the author would have been only thirty. Percy and Powers come to mind, even though they tended to be older before the rather world-weary, recalcitrant, and fiercely moral characters they conceived came most fully to life in their mid-century fiction. Their protagonists could still rely on a Catholic church somewhat able to shelter them against the secular storms. For Burt, who never had a faith in the Church although from his childhood-- the orphanage that fostered his hagiographic fascination gets but a glimpse-- he determined to turn away from today as much as possible in his search for meaning, he founds what becomes a popular Confraternity of Times Lost Regained.

Anna Bibko, his mother-in-law, represents, as Burt realizes, his own devotion to times lost. She rails against the destruction of her Carpathian homeland; he inveighs against coffee as "out of period" for a re-enactor who lives the life of an idealized medieval man. Anna had inspired his own search backwards, but the courage that Wodicka gives Burt, at the end of his quest as he strives to re-connect with his children, shows the folly of such an anachronistic quest for today's lost souls. But, we do not laugh at such people, for Wodicka avoids easy caricature.

Burt recalls re-enacters and other lost souls seeking solace even though their New Age tendencies, as he knows, probably clash with the reality that their monastic role-model was likely as much of a Catholic "scold" as her fellow nuns. He notices the women of today chanting in the spirit of Hildegard of Bingen, with his lawyer-friend "non-ironically" humming, "standing seriously" under a sign: "Mysticism is the annihilation of the self in order to make room for God." By the graceful conclusion, Burt ambiguously awaits his own salvation, and the novel circles back to its beginnings with Hildegard's own childhood enclosure within a hermit's cell. She too awaits deliverance so as to achieve her potential.

For Burt, such a liminal state, to Wolicka's credit, seems to teeter on the line between admirable wisdom and dangerous delusion. Burt, true to his character as Wolicka creates him, remains despite the first-person narration rather enigmatic and forlorn. "In the same way that Anna Bibko showed me my future thirty years ago, demonstrating how I could dedicate my life to history, the dying old woman in the Lemko costume is now showing the end results of that dedication, what happens next, what is left: the fury, hopelessness, the rotting present of a life lived perpetually out of period. My heart breaks for both of us." (249) A man out of time, Burt by the end of this ambitious, uneven, yet finally graceful journey into an aging man's restless soul, manages to feel compassion in the true sense, guided by his medieval mystic predecessors.