Evan Sarah Epstein

From 1919 to 1969, Cornell University sponsored a home economics practice house where female students could enroll to learn how to be good homemakers.  The most interesting part of this class was that in addition to learning how to cook, clean, sew and fix household appliances, the women in this program also learned how to be mothers… with real babies. Lisa Grunwald apparently came across photos of some of these babies and was inspired to write a book.

In Grunwald’s The Irresistible Henry House, babies arrive from the local orphanage and Martha, who runs the practice house of an all-women’s college, places the infants in the arms of aspiring moms. Armed with a strict parenting style eschewing the need for love and physical contact, Martha’s lesson plans are more akin to a military schedule than one of a baby’s.

All the babies are given pseudonyms that start with “H.” Henry arrives in 1946 and unlike all the babies before and after him, doesn’t return to the orphanage after his two-year stint as a practice baby, or become a part of an adoptive family. He becomes Martha’s special case and stays on to grow up in the practice house.

Henry’s life is then the center point of a story not unlike that of Forrest Gump’s – he lives through dramatically changing social times and is presented with a series of almost unbelievable opportunities.  He becomes an illustrator at Walt Disney, working on Mary Poppins, sleeps with a series of women, moves to London to work on the making of Yellow Submarine, and eventually moves to New York.  His relationship with Martha, who he calls Emem, deteriorates rapidly once he decides she’s betrayed him and he remains emotionally distant and almost cruel to her for most of the book.  His distance only makes her more desperate and needy and in turn highlights his attachment disorder that serves as a backdrop to his every action.

While I had a hard time believing that Henry could remain so disenchanted with Martha well into adulthood, and that he could always somehow land sunny-side up, I couldn’t help but enjoy the boy-man Henry. Grunwald does a good job of making him irresistible.  I really enjoyed this book.  I had no idea that practice houses and practice babies existed, so it was really interesting to see a bit of American history woven into a story that would otherwise be one of many coming of age in the 1960s stories.

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