The Irresistible Henry House: A Novel

At the beginning of the book, I felt very distant to the activity taking place on its pages. Even though I myself have a daughter that came to us via adoption (and was raised for the first several months of her life by a group of sweet, compassionate, affectionate women), and I had a vested interest in Henry's first few years at the "practice house", I never felt quite at home there. Even though Henry is eventually adopted *into* the practice house and the professor who runs the program of having practice babies takes on the role of his mother, he never quite connects with anyone. Instead, he makes it his life's purpose (and I'm not exaggerating) to charm EVERYBODY.

We follow Henry's rocky road through life. Although he can literally charm the pants off most anyone he meets (and he does this several times in the book with the abundance of females that he interacts with), he's not really interested in getting into anyone's head or heart. Instead, he just wants to share his affection with everyone around him rather than focusing it on one person, including his own long suffering "mothers" (one adoptive, one biological) who still seeks a connection with their son that neither seems to be able to create.

The book isn't all about practice babies and quaint college campuses, it's the story of Henry House's journey into manhood, to finding out who he *wants* to be and breaking free from the expectations placed on him by not just one mother, but several groups of "practice" mothers, his blood family, the college community he spends his childhood in, a beloved childhood friend who may be the first and only person to ever truly understand him, and a bevy of other people who come into his life.

Henry grows and so does the story - we even get an inside peak at the workings of Disney (LOVED this part) when Henry works as an animator there in the early days and then travels to Europe to work on a project with the Beatles.

My least favorite part of the book was the end. Our journey with Henry is complete when his eyes an heart begin to slowly open. Whether he can be "fixed", no one knows. But it was quite a ride.

I highly recommend this book. It was engrossing and definitely an adventure. It's not about domestic science or childrearing- it's about the results of all the many, many years of science and philosophy behind raising a child.Get more detail about The Irresistible Henry House: A Novel.