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Dianna's Reviews > The Irresistible Henry House
The Irresistible Henry House
by
by
** spoiler alert **
This review is probably only appropriate for folks who have already read or probably won't read the book. Since I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone, I'm not going to be shy about the spoilers.
Henry House was a practice baby in a 1940s-50s College Home Economics Program. His mother (who'd given him to an orphanage at birth) was the daughter of the President of the University, and as such got herself inserted into that class as well as the baby. She begs the Home Ec professor (who desperately clings to Henry) to keep the baby, since she cannot. She goes to join her AWOL (from WWII) husband in Australia to become a drunk. So Henry is raised by dozens of different mothers... the closest thing to a real one he had (the professor) was just using him to fill a void in her own life. She's constantly staring into his eyes searching for the love she so desperately needs. When he asks about his real mother, she so desperately wishes it were her that she invents a lie... a lie that, when revealed by his own drunk mother's return, turns Henry against her for life. He remains with her, feigns muteness, and gets sent away to a boarding school for special needs kids.
And so the majority of the book is Henry's childhood spent learning what love might be like, having come from this unique situation.
There are some really fun settings, as a teenaged Henry becomes an animator for Disney during Mary Poppins and the Jungle Book, as well as later for the Yellow Submarine. It's got a good sense of period, which was fun to read.
I think the book would be infinitely more interesting if it spent only a couple of chapters on his origin, and instead focused on the adult life of a man who was raised that way. When the book ends, I think Henry's only about 20-22 or so, and the majority of the book examined his sexual maturation -- which could be decidedly odd as he never had a single adult male role model.
It's not set up for a sequel at all, but if there is one, then I bet I would like it quite a bit.
Henry House was a practice baby in a 1940s-50s College Home Economics Program. His mother (who'd given him to an orphanage at birth) was the daughter of the President of the University, and as such got herself inserted into that class as well as the baby. She begs the Home Ec professor (who desperately clings to Henry) to keep the baby, since she cannot. She goes to join her AWOL (from WWII) husband in Australia to become a drunk. So Henry is raised by dozens of different mothers... the closest thing to a real one he had (the professor) was just using him to fill a void in her own life. She's constantly staring into his eyes searching for the love she so desperately needs. When he asks about his real mother, she so desperately wishes it were her that she invents a lie... a lie that, when revealed by his own drunk mother's return, turns Henry against her for life. He remains with her, feigns muteness, and gets sent away to a boarding school for special needs kids.
And so the majority of the book is Henry's childhood spent learning what love might be like, having come from this unique situation.
There are some really fun settings, as a teenaged Henry becomes an animator for Disney during Mary Poppins and the Jungle Book, as well as later for the Yellow Submarine. It's got a good sense of period, which was fun to read.
I think the book would be infinitely more interesting if it spent only a couple of chapters on his origin, and instead focused on the adult life of a man who was raised that way. When the book ends, I think Henry's only about 20-22 or so, and the majority of the book examined his sexual maturation -- which could be decidedly odd as he never had a single adult male role model.
It's not set up for a sequel at all, but if there is one, then I bet I would like it quite a bit.
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Reading Progress
April 22, 2010
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Started Reading
April 22, 2010
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Finished Reading
