Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 [Hardcover]

Garrison Keillor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 27, 2001

"What makes Keillor a special writer . . . is his capacity to examine the ordinary doings of life and somehow extract little stories that say more about human nature than an institute full of sychiatrists."(Philadelphia Inquirer)

The first novel in four years from "the funniest American writer still open for business" (Time) depicts the most harrowing time of life in Lake Wobegon—adolescence

Meet fourteen-year-old Gary. A self-described "tree toad," a sly and endearing geek, Gary has many unwieldy passions, chief among them his cousin Kate, his Underwood typewriter, and the soft-porn masterpiece High School Orgies. The folks of Lake Wobegon don't have much patience for a kid's ungodly obsessions, and so Gary manages to filter the hormonal earthquake that is puberty and his hopeless devotion to glamorous, rebellious Kate through his fantastic yarns. With every marvelous story he moves a few steps closer to becoming a writer. And when Kate gets herself into trouble with the local baseball star, Gary also experiences the first pangs of a broken heart.

With his trademark gift for treading "a line delicate as a cobweb between satire and sentiment" (Cleveland Plain Dealer), Garrison Keillor brilliantly captures a newly minted postwar America and delivers an unforgettable comedy about a writer coming of age in the rural mid-west.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With a four-year hiatus since Wobegon Boy, legions of Keillor faithful will likely hold candlelight vigils in front of their favorite booksellers awaiting the arrival of this long overdue episode in the ongoing checkered history of the fictional Minnesota hamlet. Vacillating between poignant, endearing, outrageous and mocking, this thoroughly engaging, frequently hilarious bildungsroman is narrated by the libidinous, iconoclastic 14-year-old wannabe writer Gary. Recounting the trials and tribulations of coming of age under the smothering influence of the Sanctified Brethren, a religious sect preaching unrelenting hellfire and damnation during the summer of 1956 in the tiny backwater of Lake Wobegon, the somewhat nerdy hero has a sexual fixation on his slightly older cousin Kate, abhors his geeky goody-two-shoes older sister, is obsessed with pornographic sexual fantasies engendered from reading a purloined copy of the verboten magazine High School Orgies, and is preoccupied by such intellectual pursuits as classifying variations of the 10 known categories of flatulence. Given an Underwood typewriter as a bribe from his uncle to tattletale on Kate's romance with a ne'er-do-well local baseball hero, Gary turns to writing pornographic stories about his imagined adventures with Kate before he is serendipitously handed the job of substitute sportswriter for the local paper. Game after game, he is forced to observe Kate's budding romance, until the affair predictably culminates in the age-old biological consequence and the family spins into crisis mode while our hero suffers a broken heart. Although the denouement is more fizzle than bang, avid Keillorites will be left shouting "more." 25-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Beloved author and radio persona Keillor (A Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Joke Book) returns once again to Lake Wobegon, the quintessential small town in Minnesota. It is summer, and as the denizens of Lake Wobegon sit on their front porches, listening to the radio and to the swish of sprinklers on their lawns, 14-year-old Gary struggles to find his own place within the community. Gary suffers from all the hormonally induced anxieties of an adolescent boy but bears an added burden his family belongs to an evangelical group of Brethren whose definitions of appropriate behavior are much stricter than those most parents impose on their teenagers. Gary has, by his own admission, been a good boy, but he is now exploring what it means to be bad as "bad" is defined in 1950s Lake Wobegon. Keillor's wry vignettes of Gary's summer of change and turmoil are laced with his trademark self-deprecating humor. This latest will undoubtedly appeal to Keillor's legions of fans and particularly to those with a nostalgia for both the small town and the follies of youth.
- Caroline Hallsworth, Sudbury P.L., Ont.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (August 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0965031691
• ISBN-13: 978-0670030033
• ASIN: 0670030031
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,730,932 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A story of life, November 1, 2001

By 

Ryan Smith (Kuna, Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 (Hardcover)

This was my first time reading a Garrison Keillor novel. I was pleasantly surprised at how good this book was. It follows the life of 14-year-old Gary as he grows up in the summer of 1956. I love how Garrison Keillor writes. The story moves along in a lazy manner. You almost don't even realize that the story is progressing. It is much the same as I remember spending my summers. The days blend together until suddenly you wake up and realize that the summer is half over, and then suddenly you're waking up for school early in the morning again. This would make for a boring novel if Keillor wasn't such a gifted storyteller. The characters are wonderfully human and I found myself laughing out loud as Gary described the adventures and personalities of his small town. And just when you think that the book is going to be nothing but a comedy, Keillor hits you with a profound lesson about life.

This was truly a great book. Some people may be offended by parts, but this book is about life and life isn't always innocent and pretty. Garrison Keillor did a terrific job writing this book and I definitely have to recommend it to everyone.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Sensational, Hilarious, Fabulous, Book!, August 28, 2001

By 

Eustacia Vye "Eusatcia Vye" (Encino, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 (Hardcover)

Question: How many adjectives does it take to describe Lake Wobegon Summer 1956? Answer : 1956 This book is so terrific, so delightful and special and funny and endearing and ...well, you get the idea. As always, Keillor writes with a light touch and as always, gets into your bloodstream as fast as a shot of B -12. I can't even begin to impart to you the hilarity awaiting you inside the covers of Lake Wobegon Summer 1956. But, ponder if you will, our hero Gary's list of "... ten known categories of flatulence." Gary's summer 1956 is filled with characters you won't soon forget. His pious family,although smothering, are hilarious. And Gary's adventures in pornography are wonderful. Buy the book and read it! You won't regret it!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars AMUSING BUT RATHER BORING, November 26, 2001

By 

Sandra D. Peters "Seagull Books" (Prince Edward Island, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 (Hardcover)

"Lake Wobegon:Summer 1956" did contain a share of laughs and amusing moments, but overall, the book failed to hold my interest. It cound best be described as "Woe, be gone!" The book is filled with sexual fantasies and dreams of exuberant youth, but the adolescent fantasies soon became tiring and mundane. The reader keeps hoping a plot of more substance will unfold but, alas, it does not. The scenario almost seems like an attempt to reproduce the theme of a terrific older book, "Summer of 42", but Keillor's book lacks the strong setting, characters, intrigue, and raw, sentimental emotion found in "Summer of 42".

"Summer 1956" makes for a quick, light-hearted read, but it is probably not a book that will stand the test of time. Read it, if you will, but do not expect to find anything memorable among the pages.