I admit it. I’m a sucker for an intriguing book title. This one pulled me in, even before I had read what the book was about. Who is Henry House and why is his name alliterative? Why is he irresistible? A well-crafted first sentence pulls me in also. “By the time Henry House was four months old, a copy of his picture was being carried in the pocketbooks of seven different women, each of whom called him her son.” It turns out that Henry House (as well as previous and succeeding “practice babies”) was an orphan who was used as a subject for a domestic arts child-rearing class. He spent his first two years being cared for in shifts by a half-dozen practice mothers. Henry learns how to make his mothers happy, but not to get too attached to any one of them. This is a practice that follows him into his adult life, but not to his benefit.
Henry is a handsome, charismatic young man with a special talent for drawing that lands him animation jobs in the 1960s with Walt Disney and the Beatle’s Yellow Submarine movie. The reader follows the history of the time with Henry, and agonizes over his inability to develop relationships with his adopted mother and other women. The author used the historical record of Cornell University’s “practice babies” to create a life that was influenced by Henry’s past, but not defined by it as he matured. Irresistible?
You’ll have to find that out for yourself!