Tall Pine Polka [Paperback]

Lorna Landvik (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 12, 2000

In the small town of Tall Pines people gather for the annual Tall Pine Polka. A crew of locals gather at the Cup O'Delight Cafe for Lee - and her coffee - to solve their problems. But when Hollywood chooses Tall Pines for the setting of a new film, life in the town begins to get complicated.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Balanced on the remote edge of the boundary waters in northern Minnesota, the Cup o' Delight Café is home to a motley crew of locals. Drawn to the addictive coffee and the equally addictive company, the customers share the fortunes of life together. Having left the dangers of the big city and an abusive husband behind, owner Lee O'Leary helps guide and inspire her friends, particularly Fenny Ness. There seems to be no problem that Lee or her coffee can't solve.

Then Hollywood arrives and chooses the town of Tall Pine as the setting--and Fenny as the star--of a new film. With the encouragement of her friends, Fenny overcomes her inhibitions and agrees to act. To add to the general excitement, a handsome stranger arrives in town. Big Bill has qualities that draw both Lee and Fenny to him; as their world turns upside down, Lee and Fenny struggle to balance loyalty and happiness.

Author Lorna Landvik has won acclaim for her blend of quirky humor and bittersweet realizations. As in her earlier novels, Patty Jane's House of Curl and Your Oasis on Flame Lake, Landvik juxtaposes a slapstick sense of rural Minnesota with humble and human pathos. Unrequited love, personal insecurity, and post-traumatic stress disorder may not be the most original sources of profundity, but Landvik builds her characters' growth like layers of translucent watercolor, and ultimately creates a complex and endearing novel. --Nancy R.E. O'Brien --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Having previously created beguiling characters in Patty Jane's House of Curl and Your Oasis on Flame Lake, Landvik invites readers to belly up to the counter and join the regulars sipping coffee at Cup O'Delight Caf? in Tall Pine, Minn. In this swift-moving romp, Lee O'Leary, the Cup O'Delight owner, is a 210-lb., 40-year-old redhead who fetched up in this north woods tourist town three years ago while fleeing her abusive stockbroker husband. Lee's coffee shop is the daily rendezvous for idiosyncratic locals: shoemaker Pete, suffering unrequited love for Lee; Mary Gore, famous for her bad poetry; Slim, the barking 'Nam vet; and lesbian couple Frau Katte and Miss Penk. When Hollywood invades Tall Pine, the eccentric population triples. Location scouts for a grade-B flick, Ike and Inga, find their perfect leading lady in the book's central figure, 22-year-old Fenny Ness. Ever since her adventurous parents died in an accident in Belize, Fenny has run the local bait and craft shops. Fenny is reluctant, but her friends persuade her to take the Hollywood plunge. Lacking guile or malice, plainspoken Fenny transforms the Hollywood types, standing up to a tyrannical director, flooring more than one nasty talk-show host, and making life-long friends of the other actors. Meanwhile, Fenny struggles to win and keep the man she loves: Big Bill, a half-Polynesian, half-Chippewa musician and athlete, who floats into town to reconnect with his Indian heritage and stirs up romantic rivalries between Fenny and Lee. The endless nattering of Landvik's locals (the tale is told mostly in dialogue) doesn't add up to much in terms of character development, but the lengthy novel is good-natured and zooms along, fueled by zany Minnesota energy. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection; 8-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty Ltd (July 12, 2000)
• ISBN-10: 0732266858
• ISBN-13: 978-0732266851
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Lorna Landvik is also the author of the bestselling Your Oasis on Flame Lake and Patty Jane's House of Curl. She has worked as an actor, a comedian, and a speed typist in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. She lives with her husband, two daughters, and their dog, Petunia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read, August 10, 2001

By 

Hearth (Darnestown, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tall Pine Polka (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

This is the kind of book you save to give to your sister or best friend. It's a great read, very interesting characters. Both the men and the women are three dimensional and grow throughout the book.

Having grown up in Los Angeles, I can appreciate the movie ambiance. Lankvik gets it down pretty well, with a good understanding of the peculiar hold that tinseltown sometimes gets on folks. Yet, it isn't one of the nine million Hollywood noir books that have gone on so tediously elsewhere. The people are real people, in Hollywood or in Minnesota.

I found myself thinking about the book all during the workday, wondering if it would be possible to sneak away to read one more chapter before night time. Now that's a book!

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sweet, folksy, entertaining look at an unusual small town, July 21, 2001

By 

Carol S. (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Tall Pine Polka (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

If you like the small-town, everybody-knows-your-name ambience of Jan Karon or Fannie Flagg novels, then you should give "The Tall Pine Polka" a whirl. Lorna Landvik's latest novel focuses on the residents of a small Minnesota town: their loves & losses & lessons they learn. As you might expect, there is a cast of eclectic, eccentric townfolk: coffee-shop owner/former battered wife Lee, orphan/souvenir shop owner/soon-to-be-Hollywood-starlet Fenny, delightful lesbian couple Miss Penk and Frau Katte, shoemaker-with-an-unrequited-love Pete, and sexy Native American newcomer Big Bill, to name a few. Interspersed - to great comic effect - are some California residents, too, as the plot revolves around the making of a Hollywood movie in this small town and the when-worlds-collide effect on the residents and filmmakers. Sure, the book's a little corny from time to time, and there are an awful lot of coincidences and tie-backs (a la a Seinfeld episode), but it's hard to beat a novel as spunky, fresh and ultimately upbeat as this one.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully inspring, September 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Tall Pine Polka (Hardcover)

The story revolve round a group of lively coffee-lovers in a small town, the Tall Pine. Central to the story is the lovable Fenny Ness and her friend Lee. A summary of the story will not do justice to the book as all the characters in the book, no matter how small their roles were, made the whole book came alive. The story brought in Hollywood, romance and rivalry, and traces of tragedies, but through them all, the characters remained true to themselves and their beliefs. The whole book is so lively, so lovable that I found it hard to put down.

Reading the book, I felt as if I know Fenny, Bill, Lee and gang all my life, sharing their laughter and tears. It was as if I am part of Cup O¡¦Delight. It made me feel inspired and encouraged at the thought that there is some place in the world where faults are accepted, where rules can be broken gracefully and where love conquers all.