6 Books to Watch for in April 2010

The Irresistible Henry House

By Lisa Grunwald
432 pages; Random House

Given up for adoption as an infant, handsome Henry House is being raised in a so-called practice house, a building where college girls studying home economics take turns acting as his loving mother, changing his diapers, reading to him—and then disappearing when the course ends. Based on a largely forgotten educational practice at such august institutions as Cornell University from around 1920 to the '60s, Lisa Grunwald's imaginatively picaresque and often gut-wrenching novel, The Irresistible Henry House, explores the psychological and social world of these children...Read more