Cathie Pelletier is back with a hilarious, touching, and insightful novel about the Woodstock generation. In A Marriage Made at Woodstock, Fred and Lorraine Stone, a forty-something couple who met and fell in love at the famous musical festival in upstate New York, have evolved and grown - but not in the same direction. Fred has become Frederick Stone, Computer Accountant and Consultant, while his wife, Lorraine, has become Chandra - that's Sanskrit for changeable - Stone, animal rights activist and teacher of seminars in human psychology. Now that the nineties are the sixties upside down, can this marriage survive? Cathie Pelletier has established herself as one of the most bitingly funny and brilliantly original observers of the American landscape and spirit. Now, with her incisive wit and natural storytelling powers at their peak, Pelletier makes us look hard - and laugh even harder - at how strange life has become for children of the sixties. In A Marriage Made at Woodstock, she takes us to Portland, Maine, and into the lives of her most appealing and surprising characters to date.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In a novel that will surely bring her new fans, Pelletier ( The Bubble Reputation ) takes scathing aim at the vanities of older baby boomers, reading a generation's identity into imported coffee beans and therapy seminars. Frederick Stone and Chandra Kimball met at Woodstock, married soon after and consider that famous concert the seminal influence on their lives. All around them they see evidence that the graying members of their generation have sold out, but surely this can't have happened to them. True, Frederick's an accountant, but he specializes in helping small businesses and, besides, he's a vegetarian. Chandra, meanwhile, is an animal-rights activist and sometime therapist. Suddenly, Chandra moves out, claiming that Frederick no longer pays attention to her or anything she does. Distraught, Frederick calls forth his memories of Woodstock, hoping that these reflections of his marriage's beginning can help him discover what went wrong. Pelletier turns a keen satirical eye on the former hippies and other countercultural residents of Portland, Maine, and her portrait of Frederick's divorced brother, a Robert Bly-quoting veterinarian who dates women half his age, is especially sharp and funny. She is less successful at capturing the dynamics of a marriage on the rocks; for all of Frederick's musings on Chandra, the texture of their shared existence--and of its dissolution--never quite comes clear. But Pelletier keeps a straight face while chronicling the antics of grown children in this enjoyable social comedy of the '90s whose extend 30 years deep.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Pelletier, author of The Bubble Reputation (LJ 4/1/93) and other contemporary novels set in Maine, here tells the story of Freddy and Lorraine Stone, who fell in love at the Woodstock music festival. Now, two decades later, Fred (a former English major) is an uptight workaholic accountant who alphabetizes the family's shopping list, charts his graying hair on his computer, and makes sure he gets to work earlier than his neighbor. Lorraine, who has metamorphosed into Chandra, gets her doctorate in psychology and spends her time fighting the good fight for animal rights and the environment, facilitating classes in "The Psychology of Names," and leading protest marches. Should this marriage be saved? In this always entertaining, often laugh-aloud account of the painful dissolution of a longtime relationship, Pelletier has produced an immensely satisfying novel that echoes the lives of many fortysomething readers. An excellent purchase for public libraries.
--Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
--Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cathie Pelletier rocks,
By
This review is from: A Marriage Made at Woodstock (Hardcover)
Loved this book, being of the Woodstock generation myself. I appreciated the intergenerational slant of this book and plan to read it again.Bound to stand the test of time.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Life Changes Explored,
By Jennifer Smith (Wells, ME USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Marriage Made at Woodstock (Paperback)
"A Marriage Made at Woodstock" explored a life-changing experience in middle age. It caused me to re-evaluate my direction and goals. A lesson is threaded intricately in the plot and you walk away with something you can hold on to. The character's conflicts emphasize what is valuable in life. A must read for diehard or newly won Pelletier fans.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book of Baby Boomer angst I've read.,
By A Customer
This review is from: A Marriage Made at Woodstock (Paperback)
Not sure what the previous reviewer missed, but it was a lot! I read reviews of this in San Francisco Chronicle and New York Times when it came out and it sounded great. But didn't get a copy in my hands to read until a few months ago when I found it in a bookstore in D.C. I stayed up all night laughing my you-know-what off as well as feeling the pain that comes with a failed relationship and approaching middle age. I say the author nailed it for us, as one reviewer says on the paperback. "She taught us about our generation." I agree.
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