Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town [Abridged, Audiobook, Unabridged] [Audio Cassette]

Chris Bohjalian (Author, Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 16, 2003

In March 1986, while living in Brooklyn, Chris Bohjalian and his wife were cab-napped on a Saturday night and taken on a forty-five-minute joy ride in which the driver ignored all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight he deposited the young couple on a near-deserted street, where police officers were about to storm a crack house. Bohjalian and his wife were told to hit the ground for their own protection. While lying on the pavement, Bohjalian's wife suggested that perhaps it was time to move to New England.

Months later they traded in their co-op in Brooklyn for a century-old Victorian house in Lincoln, Vermont (population 975), and Bohjalian began chronicling life in that town in a wide variety of magazine essays and in his newspaper column, "Idyll Banter."

These pieces, written weekly for twelve years and collected here for the first time, serve as a diary of both this writer's life and how America has been transformed in the last decade. Rich with idiosyncratic universals that come with being a parent, a child, and a spouse, Chris Bohjalian's personal observations are a reflection of our own common experience.

"Chris Bohjalian is a terrific columnist—thoughtful and thought-provoking. Just like me! No, really, this guy is good." —Dave Barry, author of Boogers Are My Beat


“The best book I’ve ever read about life in a contemporary village. There’s no doubt that Chris Bohjalian has established himself as one of America’s finest, most thoughtful, and most humane writers.”
—Howard Frank Mosher


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This audio adaptation of Bohjalian's (Midwives, etc.) collection of essays on life in small-town Lincoln, Vt., gets off to a slow start but soon finds its voice. The first essay, an overview of the town and how it has changed over the decades, is weighed down by dry, repetitive statistics (number of dairy farms today vs. 20 years ago, number of cows today vs. 20 years ago, etc.). Bohjalian's high, thin voice isn't suited to historical nonfiction. However, once he begins talking about his own experiences in Lincoln, his voice warms. His tone is appealingly self-deprecating as he tells of his shame at being "the slowest driver in Vermont" (because he's one speeding ticket away from losing his license) and his squeamishness at the prospect of removing a dead bat from his woodstove, where it's been festering for months. Bohjalian speaks with reverence and sorrow about a flash flood that destroyed 80% of the town library's books, and he talks in moving tones of a girl who bravely threw a joyous farewell party for her elderly horse the day before he had to be put down. This audiobook is likely to appeal to both small-town residents who can relate to Bohjalian's descriptions and wistful city dwellers who wish they lived in a place "where everybody knows your name."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“Chris Bohjalian is a terrific columnist—thoughtful and thought-provoking. Just like me! No, really, this guy is good.” —Dave Barry

“[Bohjalian] is writing about one of the most important issues in America today—how do we retain our sense of community. . . . Gentle . . . sensitive . . .heart-warming.” —Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“These essays carry a community connection and a humble grace. When words read this easily, you know they also carry a lot of work. Bohjalian is a reliable guide, moving from pastures to town steeple to the edge of the playground.” —Boston Globe

“Whether you’re aching to escape the urban grind or yearning to have your small-town experience reflected back at you, you’ll do well to pick up Idyll Banter.” —Elle


From the Trade Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Random House Audio Voices; Unabridged edition (December 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0739309137
• ISBN-13: 978-0739309131
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,781,267 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Chris Bohjalian is the author of fourteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers, The Night Strangers, Secrets of Eden, Skeletons at the Feast, The Double Bind, Before You Know Kindness, The Law of Similars, and Midwives.

His new novel, The Night Strangers, is a ghost story inspired by a door in his basement and Sully Sullenberger's successful ditching of an Airbus in the Hudson River.

Secrets of Eden, his 2010 novel, will air as a Lifetime Television movie on January 28, 2012. It stars John Stamos and Anna Gunn.

Chris won the New England Book Award in 2002, and his novel, Midwives, was a number one New York Times bestseller, a selection of Oprah's Book Club, a Publishers Weekly "Best Book," and a New England Booksellers Association Discovery pick. His work has been translated into over 25 languages and twice before become movies ("Midwives" and "Past the Bleachers"). You can see some of the international covers on this web site.

He has written for a wide variety of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Reader's Digest, and the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and has been a Sunday columnist for Gannett's Burlington Free Press since 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.

You can learn more about him here on the Q and A, as well as on Facebook . And, if you like, follow him on twitter as well.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Personal, Concentrated, Becomes Universal, June 23, 2004

By 

Lawrence E. Wilson (Mayfield, East Sussex, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town (Hardcover)

Much as I love novels, there are times when short, pithy, engaging non-fiction is exactly what I feel like reading. And I am well aware that there are damned few writers in the world who can claim mastery of both forms. Chris Bohjalian is one such writer, and "Idyll Banter" is a wonderful little book that illuminates an artistic paradox: that the act of sharing what is personal and private somehow irises the experience open into deeply touching universality.

I have long admired Bohjalian's work--"Water Witches" and "Midwives" are among my favorite novels--and I recommend "Idyll Banter" unequivocably. His brief, concentrated accounts of births, deaths, weddings, dances, and dinners in a very small town engage the reader in ways not immediately apparent. I've never spent time in Lincoln, Vermont, but I feel that I know these people, somehow. It isn't a rich place, or a perfect one, but it is genuine, and it is beloved, and, in Bohjalian's deft hands, it comes alive: complex, unexpected, deeply rooted in history and advancing winningly into into the 21st century.

The best examples of this sort of book creates a sort of envy, a wistfulness, a longing to belong, however briefly, to the place described. Bohjalian manages to create the feelings that we, too, all of us, might have a welcome share in a fulfilling and happy life in this community. And if not to Lincoln, then encouraging us to look again at our own neighborhood and our own families with newly opened and appreciative eyes. Really well done. Really well-written.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A real life Lake Woebegone, January 7, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town (Hardcover)

This book had me laughing out loud one moment, and sighing wistfully the next. The characters in it seemed so real -- probably because they are real! Anyway, I was very, very moved by the people in this strange and quirky little town. There are some touching and poignant stories in here -- and then some, like the one about the outhouse races, that are a scream.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book About A Small Town and Life in General, April 19, 2004

By 

Timothy Kearney (Haverhill, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Idyll Banter: Weekly Excursions to a Very Small Town (Hardcover)

For most people, Chris Bohjalian is best known as a novelist with books such as THE BUFFALO SLODIER and MIDVIVES to his credit. The people of Lincoln, Vermont and the vicinity probably best know Bohjalian as a columnist for THE BURLINGTON FREE PRESS. Now readers outside of Vermont can read and appreciate his reflections in small town life in IDYLL BANTER, a collection of these columns.

Bohjalian is hardly the first person to leave a major city and find a different pace to life in a small town. He is also not the first writer to explore life in a small town. The essays do not include tried and true clichés but rather give an honest and refreshing look at life in general. Most of the essays are upbeat and thought provoking. Bohjalian is involved in each of them, yet the book is not about the author and his family. Rather the author and his family give perspective to Bohjalian's observations. Perhaps the most moving passages in the book can be found when he talks about the Church where he worships and the his reflections on the town cemetery

The book will appeal to a wide variety of readers, but it is my guess that people involved in teaching and public speaking will probably find the book useful. People involved in preaching and ministry will also find in the book excellent sermon and homily starters.