The Madam [Paperback]

Julianna Baggott (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 24, 2004

West Virginia, 1924: Alma works in a hosiery mill where the percussive roar of machinery has far too long muffled the engine that is her heart. When Alma's husband decides that they should set out to find their fortune in Florida, Alma has little choice but to leave her three children and ailing mother behind. But when Alma is then abandoned at a Miami dock, she is suddenly forced to make her own way in the world. With the help of a gentle giantess and an opium-addicted prostitute, Alma reclaims her children from the orphanage and forges ahead with an altogether new sort of family. As an act of survival, she chooses to run a house of prostitution, a harvest that relies on lust and weakness in men, of which "the world has a generous, unending supply."

The Madam is the story of a house of sin. It is here where Alma's children will learn everything there is to know about "love and loss, sex and betrayal." Based on the real life of the author's grandmother, The Madam is a tale of epic proportions, one that will haunt readers long after its stunning conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Baggott again explores family dysfunction in this fictionalized account of her own great-grandmother's bordello in 1920s West Virginia, though the mannered style is a departure from the darkly comic tone of her previous novels (The Miss America Family, etc.). Alma and Henry can barely feed their three children-responsible Irving, slow-witted Willard, nervous Lettie-despite their grueling jobs, hers in a hosiery factory, his in a railroad yard. So when a bootlegging scam artist lends them money to buy a trunk containing "unclaimed goods from a ship of rich folks" down in Florida, Alma and Henry are desperate enough to quit their jobs and head south. The scheme doesn't pan out, and Henry announces he won't be returning home. Panicked, Alma heads back to West Virginia, picking up a giantess named Roxy along the way. Together with an opium-addicted former prostitute named Delphine, the women devise a plan to make money: Alma will open a whorehouse, Delphine will preside as "queen" and Roxy will keep the men in line. This arrangement sits beautifully with Alma's no-nonsense child-rearing philosophy ("What would [the children] learn among whores? Practicality"). But when Lettie turns 15, Alma is unprepared for her daughter's rebelliousness and turns to an unlikely source to save the girl's life. Despite its titillating theme and quirky supporting characters, this is a rather standard kitchen-sink drama. Baggott weighs down the story with pretentious, awkward, vaguely folksy expressions ("he looks mannerable"; "she is desirous of the change she feels"; "Alma hears a car rattle to a bereft exhale"). Fans of her readable, charming earlier novels may be mystified.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

In her two popular previous novels, Girl Talk (2000) and The Miss America Family [BKL F 15 02], Baggott skewers contemporary American domesticity with quirky humor. She now journeys back in her own family history to forge a tale as awesome and menacing as a hurricane. Marrowtown, West Virginia, during the 1920s and 1930s is a gritty place of backbreaking labor, moonshine, scam artists, abandoned children, men who beat women, and women who fight back. Haunted by a miserable childhood, Alma is overwhelmed by the demands of her husband and three children and utterly exhausted by her factory job and the work of running a boardinghouse. Finally abandoned by her weak-willed mate, she rejects the unjust world of thankless toil and starts her own business, a brothel. Baggott's insights into the selling of sex and women's depthless capacity for improvisation in the fight to survive and to defend their loved ones are galvanizing in their intensity and drama, and her cathartic and commanding novel is a provocative paean to unconventionality, unexpected alliances, courage, and autonomy. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press (August 24, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743454588
• ISBN-13: 978-0743454582
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #575,122 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Critically acclaimed, bestselling author, Julianna Baggott -- who also writes under the pen names Bridget Asher (The Provence Cure for the Brokenhearted) and N.E. Bode (The Anybodies) -- has published 17 books, including novels for adults, younger readers, and collections of poetry. Her latest novel, PURE, is the first of a trilogy; film rights have sold to Fox2000 -- www.pure-book.com. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Best American Poetry, Best Creative Nonfiction, Real Simple, on NPR.org, as well as read on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" and "Here and Now." Her novels have been book-pick selections by People Magazine's summer reading, Washington Post book-of-the-week, a Booksense selection, a Boston Herald Book Club selection, and a Kirkus Best Books of the Year list. Her novels have been published in over 50 overseas editions. She's a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University and the founder of the nonprofit Kids in Need - Books in Deed. For more, visit www.juliannabaggott.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You must read The Madam, September 25, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Madam : A Novel (Hardcover)

Julianna Baggott's third novel, The Madam, is an incredible story of strength and suffering. Built with poetic language and a riveting narrative, The Madam is a must read for book groups, classes, and individuals. This is a different style for Baggott after her debut, Girl Talk and her fabulous follow-up, The Miss America Family. But if you look carefully at the themes, the poetic prose, the lovable and insane cast of characters, you'll find that The Madam is all Baggott.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Author Continues to Amaze . . ., October 8, 2003

By 

Floyd Garrett "Blue Dream Road" (Mento, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Madam : A Novel (Hardcover)

In spare, exact prose, Julianna Baggott transports us to 1920's West Virginia and continues to examine all sides of what it means to live within a family. This time, she not only explores the extended family, which she has done masterfully before in Girl Talk and the Miss America Family, but has added other characters to the bloodlines--and because of this begs the question--just what does family mean?

Julianna also looks at ONE moment in a lifetime (not as earthshattering as Sophie's Choice, but because it's NOT as heartbreaking but still involves children, still well-worth the contemplation) and asks, How does this change a life, and more to the point, how does that one moment change all the participants in that decision? In, what I would call sepia tones, Julianna goes exploring. I say sepia tones because I believe we go exploring with Julianna as if we were exploring old photos in a scrapbook. Maybe it is because of the time period--those late 1920's when life could be hard as dirt. Each page is photo-perfect in unfolding the story.

What I appreciate most about Julianna is her braveness in exploring a totally different voice than her first two novels while continuing to explore some of the same themes. Risky, sure, but ultimately rewarding for the reader. You won't pick up this novel and say, I've read this before.

As a sidenote, if you ever get the chance to go to one of Julianna's readings, you will be sold for life. Some authors are just born to read their works and some appear to be wearing shoes two sizes too small. Julianna is wearing comfortable shoes.

I've left the character particulars (Alma, Henry, the children) to other reviewers. Grab a cup of java, pick out your most comfortable chair, and settle down with The Madam. You'll be flung back in time and want to sit a spell.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Madam is a poetic, headlong rush of a story, June 6, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Madam : A Novel (Hardcover)

Everything I've loved in Baggott's other novels, Girl Talk and The Miss America Family--is here, but with a sense of place and time that draws you in from page one. There's the wild, off-kilter characters, desperation brimming just under deliberately tough exteriors, the family flung apart by circumstance and reconstituted into something altogether new, unexpected and yet exactly as it should be. The language is lush and evocative--as another reviewer said, you can tell a poet is at work here (Baggott's This Country of Mothers is an award-winning book of poetry and a must-read), but it's completely to serve the story, which culminates in a tense and powerful scene of a family saving itself. Baggott has taken on new territory here and made it her own.