Jim and Louella's Homemade Heart-fix Remedy [Hardcover]

Bertice Berry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 13, 2002

A sizzling, smart, and utterly engaging novel about sex, love, folklore, and family history from the author of Redemption Song and The Haunting of Hip Hop.

Told from wisdom's perspective, Jim and Louella's Homemade Heartfix Remedy knocks down fear and shame with truth so that love will be manifested. With help from the deceased matriarchs in her life - her mother, Aunt T, and Grandma Sadie, Louella heals her marriage to Jim with one basic recipe for love. After resurrecting their love lost in between twenty-six years of marriage, Jim and Louella Johnson, suddenly begin to tap into their intuitive powers, uncontrollably reading the minds and seeing the souls of their community members and neighbors, and become overwhelmed with the desire to spread their love. Jim and Louella's love becomes so infectious that many others in their southern town of Savannah crave it. Despite the heartache that so much knowledge can bring, they eagerly share their gifts and manage to awaken a loving heart in the mean town librarian, bring forgiveness to Mr. Blue, a child abuser who was abused himself as a child, teach self-love to a former prostitute, and pave the way down love's highway for so many others. Jim and Louella illuminate so much love throughout their small town that people flock to Jim and Louella's door for more lessons on loving.

Through it all, readers will see how marvelously, Berry creates the rekindled love between an older couple, and uses it as a springboard by which we watch them become catalysts for the healing of hearts in their southern town. Come aboard and take an adventurous ride of truth with love as the destination.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In an unusual testament to the undying power of love, Berry (Redemption Song; The Haunting of Hip-Hop) builds her third novel around the sexual reawakening of a middle-aged couple. When Jim, in his early 60s, and Louella, in her late 50s, begin to experience a downturn in their love life, Louella is visited by dreams of ancestors bearing advice on how to rekindle the flames. A marathon-length spell of torrid sex ensues and is followed by even more miraculous developments: Jim and Louella learn to read minds, becoming privy to the secret pain, frustration and vanity of the inhabitants of their small country town. Their strange transformation leads them on a magic-realist journey into the heart of their community, allowing them to stoke long-dead or dwindling sexual fires, end jealousies and destroy ancient fears. Berry's lack of pretension and focus on the humorous side of redemption make her daring premise work. Communicating a belief that all people are inherently good and that negativity is but a manifestation of buried pain the novel works both as an entertaining narrative and a parable of love. The informal "remedies" include a focus on the individual ("Everybody gotta do what works for them"), homespun metaphors ("sadness and pain can creep on you like a weed takes over a yard") and moments of revelation that stress admitting flaws in oneself and then eliminating them ("Lord, help my brother here to be strong, and then Lord, show him where he's wrong"). Extremely sexually explicit at turns, the novel is perhaps not for the prudish; but the book, for all its sexual content, isn't really about sex: it's about how cultivating a spiritual life improves not only sexual experience, but all aspects of human existence. (Aug. 13)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Jim and Louella Parsons live in a small Georgia town where everyone knows each other's business. After 26 years of marriage, husband and wife are so comfortable with one another that they are having difficulty keeping the fire in their love life. Louella calls on her ancestors Aunt T, Grandma, and Sadie for love guidance, and is instructed to follow a five-day regimen that sparks three days of lovemaking. Jim and Louella emerge with an awesome discovery--they can intuit the troubles of their neighbors and even help others with their love issues. They become more than just the talk of the town as folks from all over begin to seek their counsel. Eventually the couple learns their gift has descended to them through Jim's family and that this type of heart fixing has been going on for centuries. Berry has written another thought-provoking and entertaining novel about love and the power of the heart. Lillian Lewis
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (August 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385503776
• ISBN-13: 978-0385503778
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #436,103 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delightful & Witty!, September 20, 2002

By 

Phyllis Rhodes (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jim and Louella's Homemade Heart-fix Remedy (Hardcover)

Jim and Louella's Homemade Heart-Fix Remedy: A Novel is a delightful, anecdotic little book that is a welcomed break from the drama-filled fiction of late. The central characters, Jim and Louella, are a middle-aged, devoted Christian couple that discover a "gift of hearing" while rekindling their love life (which is rather steamy for an older couple). Jim and Louella, believing that all gifts from God should be shared, begin offering advice to their friends and neighbors on matters of the heart. Rumors of the "love couple" travel fast and their home is quickly overrun by the lovesick townsfolk in search of counsel. Much to their surprise they find some very lonely, neglected, and abused souls in their midst and quickly learn that despite their best intentions the outcome is not always what is expected.

Told largely in Louella's point of view, the reader will enjoy her sense of humor, her witty retorts, and her self-proclaimed "country" ways. The book has a wonderful cast of supporting characters that symbolically represent the good, the bad, the lost, and confused. Berry delivers a powerful message at the end, which we have come to expect as demonstrated in earlier works such as Redemption Song and The Haunting of Hip Hop. Her fans will not be disappointed because she is still on target with her keen storytelling ability and lyrical writing style. This little book is a keeper!

Phyllis
APOOO Bookclub

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book to live by, September 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Jim and Louella's Homemade Heart-fix Remedy (Hardcover)

There are only a few things better than reading a book that is entertaining and has lessons to live by; this book was just that. Bertice Berry has simple, thought-provoking sayings throughout her book that take you back to the times spent down south on the porch listening to your elders, with their wisdom and all. She also reminds us in a funny and enjoyable way that our sex lives do not have to be routine or nonexistent because of age or familiarity with our spouse/mate.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Totally awesome and good, August 22, 2002

By 

thesavvybamalady "swblkdiamond" (Prichard, Alabama USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Jim and Louella's Homemade Heart-fix Remedy (Hardcover)

I don't know how she does it, but Dr. Berry takes a story about ordinary people and try to teach us a lesson in the midst of it. I got this book yesterday, and I wish I could better describe it, but I will try. You have this middle age couple that was in a love rut, well the wife, Louella dreams up her dead female relatives one night, who tell her what to do in the love department, and chile, some of those love scenes in that book would probably rival some of Zane's stuff(which is racy)yet,to keep to the story, the couple gets out of the love rut, and come find out,they have the gift of knowing what is in people's minds, so much so, that they help, as well as frighten some of the townspeople into doing what is right.There were times that I had to put the book down and think on some of the things that was said because although it was fiction, it was if it was talking to me. At any rate, GET THIS BOOK!!!