Reviews for The madam

The average rating for The madam based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-04-27 00:00:00 Gareth Hampton The writing was beautiful, but I didn't care for the story or any of the characters.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-08-12 00:00:00 Jared Sinkowski Stolid, pragmatic Alma leaves work at the lint-filled hosiery mill and plods home through her 1920s West Virginia world awash in coal dust to a house packed full of show-people boarders, a railroad man husband with pie in the sky dreams, and three children who deserve a better childhood. When she gets there, her work will begin again, endlessly, as though the denizens of the household comprise a rather large and unseemly nest of squalling baby birds with infinite needs and peculiarities. En route, Alma pauses at a carnival, steals time away from those infinite needs and peculiarities at a side show of oddities on display where she spends her dime to see the Mule-Faced Woman. The Mule-Faced Woman is grotesque but, on balance, her life appears better than Alma's. Yet, Alma senses impending change, she's not sure exactly what, but she needs it if she's ever going to give her kids better than she ever got. Julianna Baggott's spartan, poetic prose weaves an off-kilter and dramatic story suggested by her own family's legends. In the acknowledgments, Baggott thanks her grandmother "who was raised with show people, nuns, hustlers and whores" for sharing the the facts of a very unusual life. After her husband Henry leaves her when his sure-fire money making scheme doesn't pay off, after the boarders disappear when the show closes, after almost all of Alma has drained away, transforming the large house into a bordello is the only sensible solution. The whores, the clients and the police bring a new normalcy into Alma's life even though her children will one day want something better than the nest. There's money now and food on the table. Life for Alma "becomes too complicated if she entertains the notion that her daughter is turning into a woman in a house like this. Alma can feel her life rising up for new consideration, but she prefers the way she has been for years now: A morning goes by and then an afternoon. Eventually there's evening. She sleeps. She is within it all, desperately so, and she doesn't have to think beyond it." It's not for us to know how truth and fiction combine in this well-told tale with its careful, yet intricate plot seasoned--some will say--with Southern Gothic flavoring, and overflowing with blunt-edged emotions and a no-nonsense view of life's trials and toil. But the atmosphere from beginning to end is relentless and cruel and deeply wonderful because Baggott loved her protagonist, and the show people, nuns, hustlers and whores enough to show their world of lint and coal dust and sex as almost sacred.