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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The mystery of life in a blizzard- a joyful Christmas absurdity, November 5, 2009
Christmas novels are always nice to read, however this one of Garrison Keillor's is a bit different from what you might expect. It is not the sweet stories of the PBS show Prairie Home Companion, especially when you read in the first 2 pages that Mr. Sparrow, the main character, hates Christmas - the red-green monster - the world's longest and unhappiest holiday with the sheer horror of `The Little Drummer Boy'. This story contains a lot of Midwestern guilt and woe, but yet its' little continual gems of exaggeration keep the humor alive: " it wasn't like her to fall apart like that, she being a member of the National rifle Association". James Sparrow needs to learn to love Christmas, as his wife Joyce does and also get over his fear of freezing his tongue to pump handles- their siren call where he has to force himself to keep his tongue in his mouth and not on car door handles or bronze busts of Studs Terkel. His past contains among other problems; a mother who was obsessed by worries of the Christmas tree catching fire. James flies home to Looseleaf, North Dakota where he encounters his past in the form of a dead friend who is now a wolf. A big haired airline ticket lady, a cousin who is plotting to overthrow the US government and is married to an undercover FBI agent who has married her to keep an eye on her. Through all the humorous absurdities James is rescued from his fears, the blizzard, potential arrest, learns to love Christmas, but most of all discovers the moral of the story: that small kindnesses can create great good...as good a moral as any for a Christmas book
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE IRREPRESSIBLE KEILLOR AT HIS BEST, November 24, 2009
This review is from: A Christmas Blizzard (Audio CD)
The zillions of fans who enjoy Garrison Keillor's trademark warm , folksy humor may be a mite surprised and delighted I might add to discover that he can also be caustic - entertainingly so. Of course, a great deal of the pleasure in this tale is in the reading by Keillor - there's that unforgettable voice, familiar, spellbinding as he relates A CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD. It is, of course, the holiday season, a least favorite time of year for energy drink company mogul James Sparrow and the happiest time for his wife, Joyce, Unfortunately, this year Joyce can't pursue her multitudinous yuletide preparations as she has the flu. James wants to leave it all behind, hop on his jet, and hide out for a while at their vacation home in Hawaii. However, that's not going to happen as he receives a phone call with sad tidings - his Uncle Earl is dying in Looseleaf, North Dakota. So, James has no choice but to rev up the plane and head for his hometown. Once there he's not only almost buried by a sudden snowy blizzard but also by a horde of relatives and old friends. For reasons perhaps not even known to the inscrutable James he passes himself off as a CIA agent and agrees to "hide" in an ice fishing cabin on the local lake. Well, this sort of exposure and dramatic change from the comforts of his ten-room apartment in Chicago can cause all sorts of strange reactions. Strange may be an understatement in the case of James - a confrontation with a wolf, the Big-Hair Lady, and a Chinese wise man. Keillor is the king allowing us not only to enjoy his unparalleled narration but his fertile imagination in A CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD. Oh, and by the way, Uncle Earl is just fine. Enjoy! - Gail Cooke
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat enjoyable hallucination, December 18, 2009
I am a faithful listener to Prairie Home Companion. I usually have a hard time embracing Garrison Keillor's written oeuvre, and this book is no exception. His fiction usually reads like an extended Lake Woebegon monologue - he even steals plot elements from his monologues - and, really, in many cases the monologues themselves are exactly the right length. This is a relatively short book but I still found it a bit of a slog. It contains some fresher funny moments and some truly surrealistic elements (e.g., entering or exiting an ice-fishing shack on the lake, and finding ... not what or whom you would expect). This is not a cuddly I-love-Christmas book, and you need to suspend your disbelief quite a bit. I would call it a fable, but the moral is hard to discern. I guess it fits into the satire genre most closely. I'm pretty ambivalent about this book. Definitely read it if you like his fiction. I would rather listen to his show.
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