2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Loved it, loved it!, June 17, 2008
This review is from: Love among the Walnuts (Paperback)
This inviting story warns gently of the dangers of both isolation and enmeshment with industrialized society. Either condition creates disappointments, but people have a choice. Thus, Love Among the Walnuts is The Phantom Tollbooth and Wonderland for today's youth. The lands of the lost and the looking glass are the floors of Walnut Manor sanitarium.
Two lazy-bum brothers demand higher allowances from rich brother Horatio. He saddens and withdraws to his library in a bathrobe, letting his business run itself. He dwells on the great children's classics, quite content with his books and his butler, Bentley.
Persuaded to attend a show, Horatio is love struck by an actress, Mousey of the Squeaky Voice. He says she has a small smile inside-she must be a wonderful person! He goes backstage to propose. Always optimistic, Mousey marries Horatio. They have a son, Sandy, and move with Bentley to the country among books, games, and independent lifelong learning. Bentley, missing his long-time fiancée, marries Flossie and moves her in, too.
The idyll is destroyed by the evil brothers' attempted murder of the family. However, the victims simply fall into a coma, including the cat's girlfriend, Attila the Hen. Bentley, Sandy, and the cat are the only ones to avoid this fate of a poisoned cake.
Proactive Nurse Sunnie arrives, but needs better facilities; so, Bentley, Sandy, and Sunnie move the patients next door to Walnut Manor, a friendly, though dilapidated, sanitarium. Sunnie takes lots of books and extols the virtues of self-education to staff and "inmates" (altogether, the Walnuts).
During winter soup and sandwiches, the Walnuts respond to Sunnie, while Bentley invents a coma cure. The Walnuts help the heroes fight the brothers and the Board of Directors. In fact, Walnut relatives had locked them away to steal their money. Many weren't even sick!
Amid jails and weddings, Walnut Manor transforms into a top health retreat staffed by Walnuts, including the sickest one, made well.
The moral: Anyone can guide their own life via education and a little worldly knowledge. Then they can choose their own family.
I really loved this book!
Armchair Interviews says: If you like "quirky," read this book.
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