All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well

Dazzlingly inventive and utterly original, All Shall Be Well... is a surprise and a delight.

Bursting with humour and weighted with sadness

Vibrant, original, at times hilarious...reminiscent of Philip Roth or Jonathan Franzen (or The Royal Tenenbaums, for that matter)

Wodicka has crafted an eccentric tale full of humour and compassion

A boisterous debut...a genuinely moving narrative - applause is justified

Packed with wit, humour and wise epigrammatic observations on life

Wodicka's narrative displays a skill that frequently belies his status as a first-time novelist

So who's the worst father in literature? Lear? Pap Finn? Michael Henchard? Ladies and gentlemen, there's a new contender in town. Tod Wodicka has created a monster of neglect and lack of awareness in bulbous-nosed Burt Hecker, a 63-year-old American medieval re-enactor who wouldn't know answerability from a hole in the ground.

Wodicka is assured and original, and his wry and subtle prose is a pleasure throughout. Burt is a pathetic, frustrating and sympathetic creation, heartbroken and heartbreaking as he struggles to pull himself together for his children.

Wodicka is original and writes an efficient, precise prose

A wonderfully memorable protagonist... and an arresting narrative that manages to combine both tragedy and hilarity

Boy is it fun to read All Shall Be Well...Traveling through Eastern Europe with Burt Hecker, aka Eckbert Attquiet, medieval re-enactor and mead-addled father, is a little like heading south with Charles Portis' Ray Midge or being holed up in the campgrounds with Nabokov's Charles Kinbote - uproarious, wholly odd, wonderfully rendered

An astonishing, beautiful book. It's comic and compassionate, assured in tone and richly poetic. Best of all, it's so original, unfolding in brilliantly unexpected and entertaining ways. Easily among the very best novels - never mind debuts - that I've read in years.

Peter Hobbs, author of The Short Day Dying and I Could Ride All Day in My Cold Blue Train

Tod Wodicka was born in Glens Falls, New York in 1976. He was educated at Manchester University. He lives in Berlin.

Meet Burt Hecker, aka Eckbert Attquiet, a 63-year-old medieval re-enactor with a momentous nose, who dresses in tunics and drinks too much home-made mead. His treasured wife Kitty has died and their strange and beautiful relationship is now the stuff of history; he has sold all of his possessions and bought a one-way ticket to Europe, bent on rescuing his beloved son Tristan from the 'evil' city of Prague. If only he knew that his son doesn't want to be rescued, or found. 
 
This is the story of Burt's painful, hilarious and doomed attempts to come to terms with his own past.

Tod Wodicka

The Household Spirit is a heartwarming story of loneliness and connection.

Rarely have I been so captivated by a novel. Its compassion, wisdom, warmth. I loved it.

Nathan Filer, author of 'The Shock of the Fall'

The Household Spirit is a gorgeous, lonely book... This is a wonderful book full of tiny, heartbreaking revelations and glimpses of touching humanity... Read and it be warm.

When I read Tod Wodicka's novel, it was as if somewhere in its core there was a light that glowed out onto me. It was an extraordinary experience. An extraordinary book.

The Household Spirit is a powerful and quietly compelling novel. Tod Wodicka reveals his characters unflinchingly, in all their strangeness, and never loses sight of their frailties and loves - until we know exactly who they are and love them too. Unique and surprising, The Household Spirit is beautifully told.

The Household Spirit is very special. There’s a pleasing familiarity to it but it’s also fresh, funny and unpredictable.

An intimate study of two oddball characters, The Household Spirit is also a profound meditation upon existence, the demons that haunt our subconscious, and the fragile solace to be found in human relationships. Wodicka writes with a winningly idiosyncratic combination of brio and tenderness, and concludes his story sublimely. The Household Spirit is a book to hold dear.

Clare Wigfall, author of THE LOUDEST SOUND AND NOTHING

Wodicka's fluid, expressive prose - dotted with quotable observations often as odd as his players - serves well his weaving of such a convincing, unexpected story from eccentricity, pain, and need.

Wodicka is known to be LOL funny. But when he does sad, it’s the best fiction around by miles, full of tender ache and tenderer beauty.

Wodicka’s troubled characters are sympathetic, and his sentences are funny and surprising.

There’s something wrong next door. At least, that’s what neighbors Howie Jeffries and Emily Phane both think. Since his daughter and wife moved out, Howie has been alone, an accidental recluse content with his fishing and his dreams of someday sailing away from himself on a boat. Emily couldn’t be more different: she’s irreverent, outgoing and seemingly well-adjusted. But when Emily returns from college to care for her dying grandfather, Howie can’t help but notice her increasingly erratic behavior - not to mention her newfound love of nocturnal gardening. 
 
The thing is, although they’ve lived side by side in the only two houses on rural Route 29 in upstate New York since Emily was born, Howie and Emily have never so much as spoken. Both have their reasons: Howie is debilitatingly shy; Emily has been hiding the fact that she suffers from a nighttime affliction that makes her both terrified to go to sleep, and question the very reality of her waking life . It is only when tragedy strikes that their worlds, finally, become joined in ways neither of them could ever have imagined. 
 
A poignant, big-hearted, and often humorous novel about two very unique individuals unceremoniously thrown together, The Household Spirit is a story about how little we know the people we see every day - and of the unexpected capabilities of the human heart.

Tod Wodicka

Praise for The Household Spirit

The Household Spirit is a heartwarming story of loneliness and connection.

Rarely have I been so captivated by a novel. Its compassion, wisdom, warmth. I loved it.

The Household Spirit is a gorgeous, lonely book... This is a wonderful book full of tiny, heartbreaking revelations and glimpses of touching humanity... Read and it be warm.

The Household Spirit is a heartwarming story of loneliness and connection.

Rarely have I been so captivated by a novel. Its compassion, wisdom, warmth. I loved it.

The Household Spirit is a gorgeous, lonely book... This is a wonderful book full of tiny, heartbreaking revelations and glimpses of touching humanity... Read and it be warm.

The Household Spirit is a heartwarming story of loneliness and connection.

Rarely have I been so captivated by a novel. Its compassion, wisdom, warmth. I loved it.

The Household Spirit is a gorgeous, lonely book... This is a wonderful book full of tiny, heartbreaking revelations and glimpses of touching humanity... Read and it be warm.

Books by Tod Wodicka

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter