All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Tod Wodicka (Author)
Key Phrases: siege tower, chant workshop, Anna Bibko, Mansion Inn, Queens Falls (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
A man displaced anchors Wodicka's funny, poignant and historically canny debut, previously published in Britain. With the death of his beloved wife, Kitty, 63-year-old Burt Hecker sells the Queens Falls, N.Y., B&B he and his wife ran and heads to Germany to reinvent himself as a medieval re-enactor with a troupe of chanters for the 900th anniversary of the birthday of Hildegard von Bingen. Burt, a dedicated member of the Confraternity of Times Lost Regained, never strays Out of Period (OOP), wearing a tunic and drinking homemade mead; derailed emotionally, he is estranged from his two grown children—June, who is on the verge of single motherhood and wants to return home but doesn't know her father has sold the inn, and Tristan, a brilliant Juilliard dropout who moved to Poland to reattach himself to the Lemko roots of his emigrant grandmother and now headlines at a Prague jazz club with a group of folk musicians. With the help of family lawyer Lonna Katsav, Burt attempts a détente with his resentful children. Burt's cutting wit and intelligence comprise the novel's intellectual center, while his unfettered love for Kitty gives it its massive heart. (Jan.)
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From The New Yorker
Burt Hecker, a.k.a. Eckbert Attquiet, is a medieval reënactor and misfit from upstate New York, whose nose is a dead ringer for that of the rhinophyma victim in Ghirlandaio’s "Portrait of an Elderly Man with His Son," a miniature copy of which Burt carries in his pouch. As the novel opens, Burt is in Germany, at a nine-hundredth-birthday party for Hildegard von Bingen, but he is soon off to Prague in search of his estranged son. Every word of Burt’s narration shows his desperate state of mind: "The window wipers smear stars of exploded insect into gray frowns." The climax occurs in a heartbreaking, hilarious flashback that dramatizes Burt’s need to escape into the past, as his charismatic wife is dying and a well-meaning neighbor cuts off his supply of home-brewed mead.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (January 29, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375424733
• ISBN-13: 978-0375424731
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #599,972 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars re-enacting a life, January 29, 2008

By	Richard Cumming "richo" (blue state) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

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!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Succeeds in marrying the offbeat with the commonplace, February 12, 2008

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

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

12 of 14 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

By	Elizabeth Waronker (LA, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.