Mammoth Cheese [Paperback]

Sheri Holman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 5, 2004

When Manda Frank gives birth to an astonishing eleven babies, the world descends on her home town of Three Chimneys, Virginia. Beneath the intense media spotlight the town begins to give up its long-held secrets: from the unrequited love of August Vaughn, the town's avid Thomas Jefferson impersonator, to the more dangerous and subversive passions of Mr March, the local history teacher. Meanwhile, cheesemaker Margaret Prickett decides to highlight the plight of the rural community by creating 'The Mammoth Cheese' - a 1,235-pound wheel of Cheshire which she plans to parade all the way to Washington - while failing to notice the plight of her own teenage daughter Polly, who is caught up in the dangerous romance of rebellion, and veering precariously towards tragedy...'This panoramic social novel with a needle-sharp point of view sends up both small-town America and politics. There's mordant social commentary, discussion of Jeffersonian civic ideals and bittersweet romance, plus more than you needed to know about cow midwifery' PEOPLE

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Sheri Holman's The Mammoth Cheese is the Mississippi River of novels. It winds along through most of the great themes of American fiction (tradition vs. innovation, the weight of the past, the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, the rifts between parents and children, men and women), picking up bits of history along the way, and carrying you wherever Holman wishes. The opening pages introduce at least 15 characters (not including the 11 premature babies born to dog trainer Manda Frank), a rough outline of the history of Three Chimneys, Virginia, and more information on small-farm cheesemaking than you might ever have thought you'd would want to learn, let alone absorb with fascination. Along with its moving themes, the pleasures of this novel are in Holman's grasp of human (and not only human) nature, and her gift for expressing this through unexpected details of daily life--that the cows in the local dairy give more milk when Sinatra's playing; that the dirty secret under an eighth-grade girl's mattress is Bride Magazine. Her inconspicuous flashes of verbal brilliance may go unnoticed by all but the most observant readers, but they lend sparkle to a complex and ambitious novel. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

This big but nimble novel, by the author of the well-received Dress Lodger (2000), is absolutely compelling in its swift satire, yet readers will also respond to its deep sympathies for "well-foibled" individuals. The setting is the little Virginia town of Three Chimneys, which has just experienced a record-setting event: the multiple births of 11 infants to a young, unsophisticated couple artificially helped in their pursuit of fertility. National focus on the little burg is enhanced with the visit of presidential candidate Adams Brooke. One avid supporter of Brooke is local cheese maker Margaret Prickett, whose dairy farm is in financial distress; what Margaret appreciates in Brooke's candidacy is his avid support of the small farmer. But as the weeks go on, and as the babies begin to die, the townspeople, to make themselves look good again, endeavor to take a giant cheese, created by Margaret, to Washington, D.C., to duplicate an act that apparently happened during Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Human nature exposed at its rawest--and most entertaining. Brad Hooper
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: 480 pages
• Publisher: Virago; Uncorrected Proof edition (August 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844081273
• ISBN-13: 978-1844081271
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,752,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a good read and a better ending, October 14, 2003

By 

B. Capossere (Rochester, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Mammoth Cheese: A Novel (Hardcover)

You gotta give credit to someone willing to title her book The Mammoth Cheese. Luckily, the story stands strong against the title. This is a more sprawling work than Holman's The Dress Lodger. While its geographic base is pretty focused, rarely leaving the small town it is set in, the story spins through a large number of characters and several major plotlines, including a pending farm foreclosure, a Presidential election, the aftermath of a divorce, the birth of 11 babies to one mother, a spiritual crisis, several mid-life crises, unrequited love, a growing relationship between a teacher and his pupil though whether it tends toward good or bad remains up in the air for a while, and of course, the creation and transport of the mammoth cheese itself. That's a lot to tackle and Holman admirably handles the load. As one might expect with so many characters, some are not as fully fleshed out as one would like. The history teacher and the ex-husband in particular I thought were a bit weak in their portrayal, as is the mother of 11 until somewhat later in the book. While their lack of full depth is noticeable, it does not detract over much from the work as a whole. And their somewhat shallow development is more than made up for by the rest of the characterization, which is deeply satisfying. One begins to care for and root for these characters early on. We take on their hopes and desires along with their despair and fear. The woman desperately trying to hold onto her farm and family, the Jefferson impersonator trying to figure out who he is behind his persona, the minister struggling with his recent decisions and his possible motivations, eventually the mother of 11, and perhaps most of all, the young daughter struggling to find herself among and sometimes in spite of all these adults surrounding her. The tension steadily rises throughout the novel as questions come nearer their answers, answers which Holman skillfully manages to not foreshadow too obviously. And because we care about the characters, we care greatly about the answers. There are moments that are truly terrifying, especially as one moves toward the close. It seems lately that my biggest complaint about recent books, even ones I loved such as Lovely Bones or Bel Canto, is that so many of them have had poor or even terribly endings. I'm happy to say this book broke the trend. The ending here is not only earned by what has gone before, but is the best part of the book. Another complaint I've had a lot lately is that so many characters in a lot of recent books have acted not as real people would but in ways to service the plot. Once again, The Mammoth Cheese shines as the opposite. all of the characters, even the small ones, even the ones not so well drawn, at least act human. They do dumb things, they doubt, they make mistakes, they get lucky. and because we can recognize ourselves in their thoughts and actions we care even more about what happens to them. I wouldn't call this a great book or say as some reviewers have that I couldn't put it down though I never considered doing so. It did bog down in two or three places, though only briefly, and as mentioned, some characters were too sketchy for my liking, but even in the slow parts I wanted to read on because I wanted to know what happened to these people. More than wanting to know, I wanted the right things to happen to them. I won't say if they did, but it's worth finding out.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Absurd title? Maybe. Silly Themes? No Way!, July 18, 2003

By 

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

This review is from: The Mammoth Cheese: A Novel (Hardcover)

As I was reading Sheri Holman's new novel, THE MAMMOTH CHEESE, on the subway, I received countless comments from strangers on the book's title. "THE MAMMOTH CHEESE," more than one person said to me, "What's THAT about?" Although many of the novel's situations --- and certainly its title --- are rather absurd, the novel touches on themes that are anything but silly.

Sheri Holman, whose previous novels, A STOLEN TONGUE and THE DRESS LODGER, were set in Palestine and England, respectively, here writes a novel that is not only American in its setting and scope but also quintessentially American in its themes of self-reliance, family obligation and, most importantly, independence. In many ways THE MAMMOTH CHEESE is an extended meditation on the concept of independence, explored through the examples of several carefully drawn small-town folks from rural Three Chimneys, Virginia.

There's Manda Frank, part of Three Chimneys's most notorious white-trash family, who finds herself the mother of eleven babies after a fertility drug proves a little too effective. Counseled by her pastor to keep all the babies, Manda is completely bewildered by her new responsibilities. When some of the babies start to die, Manda is torn between anguish at her loss and relief at the prospect of regaining the freedom she has always valued and the ability to hunt and roam the woods with her beloved dogs, a freedom that motherhood seems to have stolen entirely.

Also struggling with his own independence is August Vaughn. By day, August is a farmhand on Margaret Prickett's small dairy farm. By night, he dresses up as Thomas Jefferson to interpret Jefferson's life and writings to audiences of locals and tourists alike. Even though August reveres the man famous for writing the Declaration of Independence, he is unable to declare his own independence. He's in thrall both to his parents, with whom he has lived as an adult for more than twenty years, and to his long hidden and unrequited love for Margaret.

Margaret, too, must define what independence means to her. Recently divorced from her husband, she's struggling to keep her small dairy farm afloat while raising her 13-year-old daughter Polly, protecting her from the corrupting influences of modern life. Margaret has pinned all her financial hopes on newly elected President Adams Brooke, who has run on a platform of granting debt amnesty to America's small farmers. As a dramatic expression of her gratitude, Margaret is determined to present President Brooke with a 1,200-pound cheese, a gesture reminiscent of a gift given to Jefferson during his presidency. Soon, though, the mammoth cheese gets out of Margaret's control, and she must decide how far to take the media circus that ensues.

Finally, there's Polly, Margaret's teenage daughter, who loves her mother fiercely but feels lost in the wake of her parents' divorce and the drama of her mother's struggles to save her farm. She is drawn to her history teacher, Mr. March, whose favorite Jeffersonian motto is "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." Mr. March paints himself as a radical and encourages Polly to rebel, but it soon becomes clear that his interest in Polly is more sinister than a desire to help her gain her independence.

Amazingly enough, all of these threads do come together during the Mammoth Cheese's pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. Without being preachy or predictable, THE MAMMOTH CHEESE manages to incorporate some big ideas about the nature of independence and the character of America.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WONDERFUL!!!, August 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Mammoth Cheese: A Novel (Hardcover)

I cannot recall the last time I read as entertaining and smart a book as the Mammoth Cheese. It's a really smart book about family, destiny, love, and, alas, the government and the ways in which power is obtained and maintained. All of this manifest's in young Polly March's life and a far as narrators go, I haven't come across as interesting a young woman since I read Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye. Sheri Holman nails the sense of a girl beginning to think and live her own life so vividly that I could not put the book down. I was just riveted.

This is a big, important, lovable, endearing book. Don't miss it!