Full Service [Hardcover]

Will Weaver (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2005

The times they are a-changin' . . .

The summer that Paul turns sixteen his mother pushes him to take a job in town instead of just working on the family farm. “You need to meet the public,” she says, which is saying a lot for a woman deeply committed to the tightly knit religious community to which they belong. And meet the public Paul does: He meets Kirk, the angry gas station manager; Harry, a reclusive and kindly gangster; and a family of hippies passing in a yellow peace van to San Francisco. He also meets beautiful Peggy, a high school sensation, and dark-haired Dale, her onthe-
side boyfriend who is headed to Vietnam. All of them come to the station – as well as girls on summer vacation, tanned and smelling of coconut oil, and ministers from Paul’s fundamentalist church, who are worried about his soul. As the summer progresses, Paul learns the secrets of his small Minnesota town and discovers that he’s ready to have a few secrets of his own.

With richly developed characters and a flair for arresting imagery, Will Weaver tells the story of the end of one boy’s innocence, unfolding at a time when the country as a whole is undergoing a difficult, deeply disturbing coming-of-age.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up–The summer of '65 sizzles for high school sophomore-to-be Paul and his rural Minnesota family. They are members of a nondenominational Christian sect that practices communal farm work and fellowship. At his mother's urging, Paul lands a job in town at the Shell station where assorted bamboozlers give his worldview a whack upside the head. Will members of his sect condone Paul's worldly contact? Will he bring trouble upon himself for facilitating a fling between a beautiful schoolmate and the town bad boy? Or will his moral undoing be at the hands of Janet, 16, eldest child of the hippie couple who Dad charitably invites to camp at the farm while they repair their van? Teens will likely relate to details such as Paul's secretly listening to the radio under the blankets at night and his razor-sharp observations of his loving father. Male readers, especially, may be hooked by the steamy bits and will be rewarded by a cast of carefully shaped, diverse characters who illuminate important truths about that confusing time when Vietnam began to grow in the nation's collective consciousness as a constant, if hazy, backdrop to everything. The warm, affirming denouement suggests that life's highway is endlessly fascinating, frequently challenging, and bound to include some unanticipated bumps and detours.–Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Junior High School, Iowa City, IA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 7-10. At his mother's suggestion, 15-year-old Wisconsin farm boy Paul Sutton takes a summer job "in town," pumping gas at the local Shell station. "You need to meet the public," his mother says, and for a boy from a conservative Christian background, what a revelation that public proves to be! There's Harry, a retired gangster (and murderer?); a family of hippies headed for San Francisco (it being 1965); a group of popular local kids (S. E. Hinton would have called them "Socs"); and more. It's enough to test one's faith. Of course it does, repeatedly, as Paul falls in love; discovers beer, marijuana, and rum-soaked cigars; and begins to question his most deeply held beliefs. There's a lot of familiar material in this coming-of-age novel that seems a sometimes uneasy mix of Lake Woebegone and The Outsiders but Weaver is a wonderful stylist and his beautifully chosen words put such a shine on his deeply felt story that most teens will be able to find their own faces reflected in its pages. Chances are, they'll like what they see. Michael Cart
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR); First Edition edition (September 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374324859
• ISBN-13: 978-0374324858
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,289,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Will Weaver grew up in northern Minnesota on a dairy farm. The landscape of farm and small town life figures strongly in much of his writing. He has gained a national audience for his unflinching realism, and for what one reviewer called ". . . the humanity and decency that runs through all of Weaver's work" ( St. Paul Pioneer Press).

His short story collection A GRAVESTONE MADE OF WHEAT was a New York Times "notable book." His newest book is a memoir, THE LAST HUNTER: AN AMERICAN FAMILY ALBUM, which one reviewer wrote "...should have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize."

Several of his works have been adapted for radio, stage and film. SWEET LAND, an independent feature film adaptation of his story "Gravestone Made of Wheat", and starring Ned Beatty, premiered in October of 2006. His first adult novel, RED EARTH, WHITE EARTH was made into a CBS television movie.

Also known for his young adult fiction, Weaver's series STRIKING OUT, FARM TEAM and HARD BALL has a lasting place in school libraries across the country. MEMORY BOY, a post-apocalyptic novel based on environmental collapse, is widely used across the curriculum in junior and senior high schools. A sequel, THE SURVIVORS, and is due out in January 2012 from HarperCollins.

Other young adult novels include CLAWS, set in northeastern Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and featuring outdoor survival with a strong family back-story. His FULL SERVICE won starred reviews from Kirkus and Horn Books for its focus on a young man struggling with matters of religious faith and doubt. DEFECT is a novel about a teenager born with a miraculous birth abnormality, and his struggle to fit in (or not).

As an author, Mr. Weaver is particularly concerned with youth literacy and young men in particular. His new Motornovel Series is pitched toward teens who love motorsports but are not wild about English classes. SATURDAY NIGHT DIRT and its sequel, SUPER STOCK ROOKIE (2009) focus on dirt track stock car racing. The series starts with a close focus on a small town speedway and a diverse cast characters who come there, for different reasons, on Saturday nights. CHECKERED FLAG CHEATER is the latest in this popular series. Reviewed on "Good Morning America," the Motornovels were described as "great teen reads, and not just for boys."

An avid outdoorsman and a would-be piano player, Will Weaver lives with his wife on the Mississippi River in northern Minnesota.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling, nostalgic, coming-of-age novel, December 16, 2005

By 

Teenreads.com (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Full Service (Hardcover)

In the summer of 1965, shy Paul Sutton, at the urging of his mother, takes a job at the local Shell gas station in the tourist town of Hawk Bend, Minnesota. Paul is a bit apprehensive about his new summer occupation, but nonetheless leaves the shadow of his family's religious farming community and goes to "meet the public." Paul's stint as a full-service gas attendant quickly becomes anything but a simple summer job.

First, there's Kirk, the angry gas station manager whose frequent "service calls" and narrow-minded opinions soon get him in more trouble than he can handle. Then there's Harry, a kind, older gentlemen who's still trying to escape his gangster past. And beautiful Peggy, whose torrid love triangle between her controlling boyfriend Stephen and dark-haired Dale --- Peggy's on-the-side lover who's headed for Vietnam --- snags Paul into its tangled web.

Along with the great expectations of his community's fundamentalist ministers, the family of hippies visiting Hawk Bend on their way to San Francisco, and the various tourists who pass through Shell Station, Paul finds himself dealing with the prospect of a new independent life or continuing to lead the odd quiet farm life in which he grew up.

FULL SERVICE is about a young man's rite of passage as the world he lives in is undergoing its tumultuous own coming of age. It's a strangely compelling, nostalgic novel that may make readers notice how much the world has changed and how they themselves may have changed as well.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Sawtelle ([...])

5.0 out of 5 stars Sex & Existentialism For Teens, May 18, 2008

By 

A. Snyder (Brooklyn, NY U$A) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Full Service (Hardcover)

Full Service's characters feel real. The interactions feel like they matter. There is a plot arc but it doesn't dominate the book - instead the book unfolds a particular summer, a particular lens on how it goes in a small white town and the larger world. This particular lens has a lot to do with sexuality and making sense of the world. There are a couple subtle gay characters but the focus is on heterosexuality - and this is one of the few teen books I've read where the women and girls are just as lusty as the men and boys and aren't made to suffer G-d's wrath for it. This is one of the books where each character is rounded with a virtue and a problem. It reminded me of "Our Town" but less feeling of allegory and more the feeling you could know people like these.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Richie's Picks: FULL SERVICE, October 1, 2005

By 

Richie Partington "Richie's Picks" (Sebastopol, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Full Service (Hardcover)

" 'No, no, no,' she said impatiently, wiping her hands and turning down her radio, 'a real summer job--full-time. One where you could meet the public.'
"I glanced quickly through the screen door. 'What about Father?'
" 'I'll talk with him.'
"I shrugged. 'Yeah, well, what about the others?'
" 'For once let's not worry about the others,' she said. She turned back to her dishes, and her hands again moved into the soapy water as quick as trout among stones.
" 'The others' takes some explaining. We were a Midwestern family long on religion. Not Lutheran, but sort of. Not Mennonite, but kind of. Not Amish, but a little bit. Not Quaker, but a good part. It was a Christian nondenominational faith, a phrase mystifying to my few school friends who were not in it ('Come on, Sutton, how can a church have no name?'). Farmwork was communal. My family shared the larger machinery--baler, grain combine, corn picker, silo-filling equipment--with several other families in the Faith. Planting, haying, threshing, silo filling, corn picking were done on an orderly circuit: VandenEides, Grundlags, Sorheims, Suttons (that was us), and so on. Unlike the Mennonites in Canada or the Amish in central Minnesota, each family owned its own farm, but the focus was on shared work, worship, and fitting in with the others."

It's 1965, and Paul Sutton has spent his first nearly-sixteen years pretty-well sheltered by life on the farm, and living among those families of the Faith. Tumultuous events elsewhere--the Civil Rights Movement, the War--seem like they're taking place in another world as heard through Paul's mom's little transistor radio. But Paul's life is about to get shaken up in a big way thanks to one of his mom's infamous "plans":

" 'All right. I'm listening,' my father said, though he really wasn't.

" 'First, Paul finds a job--a real job, one where he can meet the public--and then we hire someone to take up the slack here at home,' she said.
"My father reached for the bread He began to butter a piece. The silence went on. Finally he said, 'First, I don't know that Paul necessarily wants to work in town. Second, who could we find to take his place? There are no hired men anymore. But third, none of it really matters, because there aren't any jobs in Hawk Bend for farm kids. Town kids have them all.'
"There was silence. I looked down at my food.
" 'It must be nice to be right all the time,' my mother said.
"I sucked in a breath and held it."

"Well, I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them."
--Minnesota native, Bob Dylan (1965), "Maggie's Farm"

Thirty or forty pages into reading FULL SERVICE, I found myself thinking back to such wonderful children's books as BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE, A YEAR DOWN YONDER, and THE CANNING SEASON. These thoughts did not spring from any belief that Will Weaver's new book is the appropriate next read for the elementary school fans of those award-winning titles.

In fact, FULL SERVICE is a real sex, drugs, rock & roll, told-in-the-first-person, oft-rude, coming-of-age, YA novel that takes place back in '65.

But what Kate DiCamillo, Richard Peck, and Polly Horvath did so well with those books was to create unforgettable, multigenerational, ensemble casts of characters. And in FULL SERVICE, Will Weaver accomplishes this so exquisitely that I could easily imagine him writing another book about any one of, perhaps, a dozen different members of "the public" with whom Paul Sutton comes in contact as the result of landing a job at the Shell service station in downtown Hawk Bend, Minnesota (population 1,750) over that summer that he turns sixteen.

That list of characters begins with Paul's coworkers, Kirk and Bud. Kirk's the former high school jock with a wife, kids, and a rather healthy number of bad habits, as Paul quickly learns when he takes over manning the pumps at that full-service Shell station and starts meeting "the public."

"I met a local housewife with blonde hair piled high and sprayed in place. She seemed annoyed that I came out to wait on her, and she asked for fifty cents' worth of gas. She kept looking toward the office, the back room. 'Isn't Kirk on today?' she finally asked.
" 'Kirk is engaged by a service call.'
" 'I'll bet he is,' she said.
" 'Is there anything Bud or I might help you with?' I asked.
"She gave me a long look. 'Bud--it'd be a cold day in hell. And you--not for a couple of years.'
"My ears reddened like train semaphores.
"Unless you know furnaces, that is,' she said, raising one eyebrow at me.
" 'No, ma'am,' I stammered.
" 'There's the main boiler and then there's the pilot light,' she said, gesturing, drawing a circle with her hands.
"I nodded.
" 'Oh, you do know furnaces after all?'
" 'Well, kind of--I mean I know what a pilot light is,' I stammered. " 'Good. Good. A lot of men go through life never understanding the difference between a pilot light and the main boiler. My first husband, Bill, he never knew where to look. Matter of fact, he couldn't even find the basement.' "

Other notable characters include the "hired hands" Paul's mom succeeds in locating and "The Workers" who are supposed to be assisting Paul in preparation for his transformation into a grown member of their religious community.

Then those distant world events make their presence felt in Hawk Bend in the guise of a family passing through town in their VW bus on their way to joining the antiwar efforts in Berkeley, and a barber in town who lost his son in the Korean "conflict."

Through it all, Paul has to figure out where he stands in regards to his beliefs, his religion, and those world events, and how he fits into "the public."

In the long run, one of the characters we see through Paul's eyes who really surprised me is his father. The author sets him up as a rigid man of strict habit who strongly adheres to the rules of his religion, but, in contrast to stereotypes, Paul's father ends up as the rare character who really understands what being a Christian is all about.

As with Will Weaver's previous book, CLAWS, this is not only a book that I'm anxious to recommend, it is also a book about which I'm anxious to sit down with a bunch of teens and have long discussions.