13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
re-enacting a life, January 29, 2008
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!
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Succeeds in marrying the offbeat with the commonplace, February 12, 2008
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
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
All Shall Be Well And All Shall Be Well And All Manner Of Things Shall Be Well, April 15, 2008
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.
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