The Mammoth Cheese

Rating:
Summary: A Mammoth Gem
Review: After page 100 I cound not put it down. Polly, August, Leland, Margaret, Manda...they all draw you in with their longing, hopes, needyness and determination of everyday life. A good story "cured" well.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant Satire
Review: Here is America with all its warts and all its faults, in the microcosm of Three Chimneys, Virginia, a tiny rural town with a population less than 800 souls.

Something enormous has put Three Chimneys on the voracious radar screen of the nation and the press: ordinary blue-collar hunting-dog trainer Manda Frank has given birth to 11 babies, known as the "Frank Eleven." No matter whether or not the babies are healthy, whether the poor couple wanted all these babies, or what will happen to them--they are now celebrities, along with the entire starstruck town.

What happens to push the Franks off the radar and replace it? None other than the desperate move of one woman, Margaret, who is struggling to keep her family-owned farm against all odds. Margaret makes the finest cheese...and to call attention to her plight and the plight of so many other family farmers faced with extinction and foreclosure, she decides to replicate a stunt from Thomas Jefferson's day and create a 1200-pound "mammoth cheese" to be ferried to Washington as a gift for the President.

How this noble cause becomes perverted by local personal interest, the press, the pastor, and just about everything and everybody else is the center of this hilarious but disturbing book. We see the facetious and sometimes horrifying modern-day obsession with fame and fortune through the eyes of Margaret's only daughter, 13-year-old Polly, who is under the influence of her cynical and smarmy history teacher, Mr. March.

All in all, a simply brilliant, albeit very upsetting, look at the underside of all that is good about America and society in general. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: too far fetched
Review: I found this story line to be a bit ridiculous. No one in the story was very likeable either. Unfortunately I was stuck on an island on vacation with it so I finished it. Not sure in hindsight had I would have not been better off just snoozing at the beach instead of reading it.

Rating:
Summary: too far fetched
Review: I got this book purely by accident when I forgot to mail in my book club notice warning them not to send me this month's selection! So I came on Amazon, read the reviews and decided to give it a shot. I am so glad I did because this book is a wonderful little treasure. The characters are wonderfully drawn, and not in that annoying "small-town cliche" sort of way. Each is unique and complex and I truly cared about them all! Holman's writing is witty and smooth and the characters are unforgettable, especially the young Polly Marvel. Loved it!

Rating:
Summary: Holman Creates Another Gem
Review: I'm a big fan of Holman's earlier book, The Dress Lodger. And I'm happy to report this book is, at least plot-wise, nothing like it. But that's not a bad thing at all. Instead, Holman harnesses her considerable humor and wordsmithing to create a well-spun, character-driven paen to the joys and troubles of modern small-town life.

Veering between descriptions of the main character's cheese farm (does not sound interesting, but is!), a presidential campaign, a family blessed (and cursed) by multiples births and a Lolita-like relationship, Mammoth Cheese is a big mouthful of a book. But Holman's ability to use well-honed facts, quirky characters and interesting plotting makes it all come together. I can't wait to see what she does next!

Rating:
Summary: Fun to Read but the Story Falls Apart
Review: If you have ever wondered what the real difference between fiction and non-fiction is, the answer is that good fiction actually has to make sense and be plausible. Real-life, non-fiction often doesn't make sense but a good story had better make sense.

Sheri Holman's Mammoth Cheese is guilty of failing to meet the standard. That's not to say I didn't enjoy reading it and would even recommend it to some of my friends but there are too many absurd plot lines to be ignored.

The setting of the story is a small town known as Three Chimneys in Virgina. In my opinion the main character is a farmer named Margaret Prickett who is a divorced, boutique cheese maker forced to make ends meet and raise a junior-high age daughter. To say she is quirky is an understatement; she forbids her daughter many of the modern pleasures of current life including brand name clothing, fast food, and movies. She often rails against corporate American and especially corporate farming being the death of the family farm.

That's not surpirising because her dairy farm is in foreclosure, so she gets behind a presidential candidate named Adams Brooke who promises to enact an amnesty regarding farm debt to save family farmers.

It's a pretty basic story but somewhere along the way we get to learn more about Three Chimneys. One such person is a woman named Manda Frank who breaks the record for births after taking fertility drugs and being counseled by a local clergyman who happens to be the father of Ms. Prickett's hired hand. The hired hand is also a history buff who likes to dress up as Thomas Jefferson and re-enact many of his speeches. Somewhere along the line he mentions the idea of delivering a giant cheese to the new president based on something that actually happened to Thomas Jefferson. The idea is pushed by his father who starts to feel some guilt regarding the advice he gave to Manda Frank. Farmer-cheesmaker Prickett ends up making the big cheese for the President, but I will not reveal more of the plot.

The problem is that there is too much absurdity for all of this to work. Multiple firms, Jefferson impersonators, big cheeses, etc. One story device might have worked, but after all you wonder if the purpose is to come with a farce. The good news is that Holman can write well so she takes you along and you have fun reading.

The problem is that it eventually fell apart when Holman moved away from the plot and dealt with human emotions. The middle school-aged daughter's relationship and feelings regarding her history teacher was somewhat offensive. Ms. Prickett's relationship with her daughter and farmhand and ex-husband turned her from being a sympathetic character to one that I began to hate.

As a whole, it's an ambitious book but it lost me in the end. After reading it, I didn't gain added sympathy or understanding for farming life which I think was one of her points. Given the positive points of the book, I will probably read other works by her but this one is a tough one to like.

Rating:
Summary: Fun to Read but the Story Falls Apart
Review: If you have ever wondered what the real difference between fiction and non-fiction is, the answer is that good fiction actually has to make sense and be plausible. Real-life, non-fiction often doesn't make sense but a good story had better make sense.

Sheri Holman's Mammoth Cheese is guilty of failing to meet the standard. That's not to say I didn't enjoy reading it and would even recommend it to some of my friends but there are too many absurd plot lines to be ignored.

The setting of the story is a small town known as Three Chimneys in Virgina. In my opinion the main character is a farmer named Margaret Prickett who is a divorced, boutique cheese maker forced to make ends meet and raise a junior-high age daughter. To say she is quirky is an understatement; she forbids her daughter many of the modern pleasures of current life including brand name clothing, fast food, and movies. She often rails against corporate American and especially corporate farming being the death of the family farm.

That's not surpirising because her dairy farm is in foreclosure, so she gets behind a presidential candidate named Adams Brooke who promises to enact an amnesty regarding farm debt to save family farmers.

It's a pretty basic story but somewhere along the way we get to learn more about Three Chimneys. One such person is a woman named Manda Frank who breaks the record for births after taking fertility drugs and being counseled by a local clergyman who happens to be the father of Ms. Prickett's hired hand. The hired hand is also a history buff who likes to dress up as Thomas Jefferson and re-enact many of his speeches. Somewhere along the line he mentions the idea of delivering a giant cheese to the new president based on something that actually happened to Thomas Jefferson. The idea is pushed by his father who starts to feel some guilt regarding the advice he gave to Manda Frank. Farmer-cheesmaker Prickett ends up making the big cheese for the President, but I will not reveal more of the plot.

The problem is that there is too much absurdity for all of this to work. Multiple firms, Jefferson impersonators, big cheeses, etc. One story device might have worked, but after all you wonder if the purpose is to come with a farce. The good news is that Holman can write well so she takes you along and you have fun reading.

The problem is that it eventually fell apart when Holman moved away from the plot and dealt with human emotions. The middle school-aged daughter's relationship and feelings regarding her history teacher was somewhat offensive. Ms. Prickett's relationship with her daughter and farmhand and ex-husband turned her from being a sympathetic character to one that I began to hate.

As a whole, it's an ambitious book but it lost me in the end. After reading it, I didn't gain added sympathy or understanding for farming life which I think was one of her points. Given the positive points of the book, I will probably read other works by her but this one is a tough one to like.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven, but interesting
Review: The author chose to write the book with a third person, removed narrator, who tended to give an overview of the very interesting, and usually funny, goings on in the town. This prevented the author from revealing the inner thoughts of the characters at times. This was particularly true of the mother of the eleven babies. The narrator gave us the information, for the most part, that the mother would allow to be known, if a real person. While this added to her character development in someways, I wanted more insight into her thoughts (and her husband, too.)
One interesting aspect was the pastor's realization that his messages from God were tainted by the filter of his own self-interest. I came to like this character very much.
A good read.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting tale of small town life in "different" times
Review: There have been several reviews which deal very well with the plot, so I will not replicate it here, except to say that the two major events, the arrival of the 11 live born multiple-birth babies and the manufacture of the title's mammoth cheese are the central events of this well crafted novel. But the real richness of the book is in the fabulous characters that Sheri Holman gives us to sympathise with, get annoyed with, and ultimately feel some satisfaction with.

And they are great characters too. There is poor Manda who finds herself in IVF hell. There is Margaret, the somewhat eccentric cheese maker who clings to the old life and her somewhat prickly teenaged daughter Polly. There is August the Jefferson devotee and his father the Pastor who somehow seems to be in the middle of all that drives the town and the people who live in it. By the end of the book you feel as if you know these people quite well, and I find that it is this talent that makes me really enjoy a novel.

There have been some criticism of elements of this book, and it certainly isn't perfect, but it is a really lovely story, well written, and I am happy to recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: a good read and a better ending
Review: 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.