The Mammoth Cheese
Sheri Holman
When Manda Frank gives birth to an astonishing eleven babies, the world descends on her home town of Three Chimneys, Virginia. Beneath the intense media spotlight the town begins to give up its long-held secrets: from the unrequited love of August Vaughn, the town's avid Thomas Jefferson impersonator, to the more dangerous and subversive passions of Mr March, the local history teacher.
Meanwhile, cheesemaker Margaret Prickett decides to highlight the plight of the rural community by creating 'The Mammoth Cheese' - a 1,235-pound wheel of Cheshire which she plans to parade all the way to Washington - while failing to notice the plight of her own teenage daughter Polly, who is caught up in the dangerous romance of rebellion, and veering precariously towards tragedy...
'This panoramic social novel with a needle-sharp point of view sends up both small-town America and politics. There's mordant social commentary, discussion of Jeffersonian civic ideals and bittersweet romance, plus more than you needed to know about cow midwifery' PEOPLE
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About Sheri Holman
Reviews for The Mammoth Cheese
`An engaging, multidimensional tale … [Sheri Holman is] a gifted writer’ Anita Shreve, Atlantic Monthly
Lovely and disarming ...the storyline is droll but the book is also tough, sad and surprisingly sweet' New York Times Book Review
`Like the 1,200-pound cheese of the title, Sheri Holman’s novel is a big, ambitious enterprise. Unlike many such enterprises - though again like the cheese - it possesses, page by page, or bite by bite if you prefer, an intense, refined and lingering flav
Profoundly moving ... Holman has fashioned a tale that is poignant and powerful and, like an award-winning cheese, surprisingly complex' Washington Post
`Holman’s novel is brilliant, the characters deeply rendered, the philosophic underpinning astute, the touch sure …Holman is one of those novelists whose world you trust completely. She’s as adept as Barbara Kingsolver at tracing the political and intelle
Flawlessly plotted ... so satisfying' Atlanta Journal
`Holman is a skilfully detailed writer whose prose blends the factual with the personal in a manner as straightforward as it is compelling … Holman’s characters are deftly drawn, flawed and earnest, corruptible and alight with brave dreams’ The Globe and