Irresistible!!!

The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald

I LOVED this book!!!! From the first sentence on, I couldn't put it down. Think of Forrest Gump, Cider House Rules, World According To Garp, and you get the idea of what treats await you while reading about Henry House. Henry is a "practice baby", you see. What's a practice baby, you ask? Henry was an orphaned infant who was one of many such orphans used in Home Economics programs at universities around the country back in the 1920's through the 60's. (I had never heard of such a thing but apparently, these programs really existed.) In this novel, Henry House is one such infant, born in 1946, and raised for the first two years of his life by 7 'practice mothers' and Martha Gaines, the strict director of the program, until it's time to replace him with the next practice baby. A borrowed baby. But the ever-needy, suffocating Martha decides to keep Henry as her own son and sets into motion the kind of life where trust and love are almost beyond reach to a child and then a man who has not had consistency in his life. (Enter Dr. Spock.) Henry's lack of connection to his many, many women is not surprising and the instant any of his women becomes too needy, Henry is on his way. Fascinating peek into the life of a womanizer. We're also treated to a look into the early days of Walt Disney's world, the art and cartooning, the 60's and hippies, drugs, free love......This book was a treat all around. Read it!!!!!!!!

On a side note, Lisa Grunwald found an old photo of an adorable infant boy on a Cornell Univ. website when she was doing research on the history of home economics classes. Clicking on the photo, she discovered that "Bobby Domecon" (last name short for Domestic Economics) was a practice baby supplied by a local orphanage to be used in the university's 'practice house' where students learned homemaking skills and took turns mothering a real live baby!