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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An enchanting read from a master storyteller, September 23, 2007
This review is from: Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon (Lake Wobegon Novels) (Hardcover)
Garrison Keillor, best known for his long-running radio saga A Prairie Home Companion, has created another memorable portrait of the Midwest in Pontoon. His fictitious farming town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota is populated by Scandinavian descendants whose lives revolve around church services and gossip, not necessarily in that order. The town's two religious beacons are the Catholic parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility and the Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church. The residents are proud of their Scandinavian heritage, including the town statue of the Unknown Norwegian and omnipresent lutefisk at church functions.
I grew up listening to Garrison on A Prairie Home Companion and attempted (unsuccessfully) to watch the recent Robert Altman film adaptation, so when I saw Pontoon, I snapped it up. Part of my love affair with Lake Wobegon stems from my own immigrant background; my grandmother immigrated from Poland in 1913, and my youth was spent at Polish masses and social gatherings (in Polish, of course!) filled with pierogi and gossip, much like Lake Wobegonians (minus the lutefisk, thankfully). I also grew up in a small Midwest town, so I could appreciate Garrison's good-natured ribbing at the monotony of life in small towns.
Garrison's characters are exquisitely drawn, and you can easily imagine them to be your next-door neighbors, full of idiosyncrasies and hidden wisdom. In Pontoon, the central character is Evelyn, an octogenarian with a passion for life who enjoys shocking the quieter Wobegonians with her forward ideas. Evelyn's sudden death wreaks havoc on her family, particularly on her alcoholic daughter Barbara, since her scandalous final wish is to be cremated and dumped into Lake Wobegon in a green bowling ball. Needless to say, this is unacceptable behavior in a conservative Midwestern town.
As the novel unfolds in hilariously unexpected twists and turns, a number of Wobegonians' lives intersect. Exiled Debbie Detmer returns from California a millionaire for a "ceremony of commitment." No weddings for this New Age guru, thankyouverymuch, but a hot air balloon and parachuting Elvis impersonator share the bill with imported French cheese, champagne, and world-class chefs flown in from California. Meanwhile, Barbara's son Kyle is thinking about ditching his girlfriend and dropping out of college to start a business involving sprinkling loved ones' ashes from a parasail. Pastor Inqvist is playing host to two dozen renegade Danish Lutheran pastors. At the hysterical climax, these and other stories intertwine in the blink of an eye during Evelyn's fateful memorial service on Lake Wobegon.
The writing is crisp and snappy, and I particularly loved the flashbacks to 1941 as Evelyn's secret lifelong romance with Raoul was revealed. Spunky Evelyn has many lessons to teach all of us about regret, seizing opportunity, and how to enjoy life to its fullest right until the end. By turns tender, philosophical, and laugh-out-loud funny, Pontoon is a must-read. Be sure to check out the detailed map of Lake Wobegon on the dust jacket!
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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Noboby's better at humor mixed with pathos, September 24, 2007
This review is from: Pontoon: A Novel of Lake Wobegon (Lake Wobegon Novels) (Hardcover)
It's been about four years since the last Wobegone book, LAKE WOBEGONE SUMMER 1956. That one featured Gary, Keillor's alter ego. I didn't really like it until I heard excerpts from it in one of Keillor's Prairie Home Companion PBS specials. Suddenly, it got a whole lot better. The man has the best "radio" voice since Jean Shepherd.
I liked PONTOON a little bit better because these characters seem a whole lot more real. Evelyn Peterson is an 82-year-old Lutheran lady who dies at the beginning of the book. She had no time for funerals. She wants to be cremated, her ashes put in a bowling ball and thrown in a lake. She leaves a letter for daughter Barbara outlining her wishes. Barbara also discovers letters from Raoul, a lover she never knew her mother had. If you live in Minnesota you'll recognize Raoul. He's a moderator of a children's show that featured THE LITTLE RASCALS who sounds a whole lot like Clelland Card, creator of "Axel and his Dog."
The other featured character is Debbie Detmer, who had left Wobegone to make her fortune in Hollywood. She did, all right, but in a rather strange profession, aroma therapist to pets. This is just Keillor cracking wise. An aroma therapist to dogs is no stranger than tourists who visit the bathroom where Senator Craig was arrested.
Occasionally Keillor will throw in a poem or a song lyric that I would guess come from his show. "Oh the horses stood around with their feet upon the ground and who will wind my wristwatch when I'm gone? We feed the baby garlic so we can find him in the dark, and a girl's best friend is her mother" is a sample. He can also get down-right philosophical: "The trick is to not want it that much. Want it less. When you get to where you don't want it all, then you might get it." Nobody does pathos mixed with humor as well as Keillor.
Keillor also seems to be suggesting that living in Wobegone might not be the best sort of life decision to make. Evelyn only started to live when she hit her seventies, traveling all sorts of places with Raoul. Her cremation and burial in a bowling ball is a message to her daughter to live life to the fullest, not to settle for a staid existence.
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19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Keillor makes a comeback!, October 29, 2007
Having at one time been a huge fan, I had pretty much declared myself completely finished with reading or listening to Garrison Keillor--done with hearing him in love with the sound of breathing through his nose on the Writer's Almanac, done with his increasingly indulgent weekend radio show (and the sycophantic and pretentious NPR listeners that praise it), and done with that horribly boring and eventless movie based on his work--when someone gave me this.
I listened to it, for lack of anything else to listen to on my morning drive, and I have to say: I liked it. It's good.
The characters, for the most part seem real and believable, the action is amusing, and the writing is clear and often funny.
"Pontoon" tells the antilinear story of a woman's death--of her life before it, of her family, of her neighbors, and it manages to entwine all of these lives into an amusing (if somewhat predictable and drawn-out and over-the-top) ending. It's touching and funny at the same time, and is, with one or two exceptions, a fairly accurate portrait of how small-town life can be.
As another entry in the Lake Wobegon canon, it's solid--not as good as "Lake Wobegon Days" or even "Wobegon Boy," but much better than say, "Leaving Home." On the audio version, Keillor does a good job of reading it, and I was grateful that some producer thought wisely enough to place the mic away from his wheezy nostrils. I mean, seriously, listen to the Writer's Almanac some morning; it sounds as if he's just finished running before every episode, or as if he just chugged a pan of grease. The guy's evidently in love with the sound of it, like a guitarist who likes to mic the sounds of his fingers squeaking down the frets. You can almost hear his nosehairs rustling.
Anyway. "Pontoon": a good book. And a good audio book.
Check it out.
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