Seventy-nine-year-old Hiram Walker shares his folksy wisdom and people philosophy with his fellow trailer-park residents, in a humorous look at life in the later years. By the author of Tales for Expectant Fathers. 20,000 first printing.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Virtually plotless, this deliberately folksy novel, with its compact 5 1/2 x 6 1/2 format, aspires to be a chapbook of wizened aphorisms and homey truths. Hiram Walker, 79, president of a trailer park in Naples, Fla., is a retired insurance salesman from Ohio. When not boasting about his conquests of assorted widows or making a good side income dealing generic drugs, he spouts cracker-barrel philosophy about growing old, love, God, suicide, being single, the empty-nest syndrome, lying politicians, American history and everything else. Sometimes funny, sometimes touching, Hiram's homespun observations of fellow trailer-park residents alight on Caesar Medina, an ex-bullfighter from Mexico, and retired lawyer Cyrus Applebee, Hiram's bitter rival for control of the park. Hitting his head in a bad fall, Hiram hallucinates the ghost of his dead wife, Rose, with whom he converses about the afterlife. He flirts with Carole Dickerson, a black neighbor, and seduces Mrs. Mylapore, a dignified Indian widow from Calcutta. Though at times as cloying as the pies he bakes for park residents, Hiram's narrative rises to heights of fiercely defiant eloquence as he rages against the dying of the light, giving this little book some surprising heft.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Van Wert (Stool Wives, p. 485, etc.) offers Hiram Walker, Florida trailer-park resident and engaging spokesman for the ``foreign country'' of old age: an everyman figure with a down-to- earth attitude living in the end zone. Seventy-nine-year-old Hiram, a former insurance salesman, retired to Florida with wife Rose. Rose, in Hiram's opinion, had begun dying with the move: She couldn't adjust to the heat, and by the time she really died, she'd pretty much given up on life. Not Hiram, though, who hasn't time to waste on grieving--there's too much to be done, including a final run for the park presidency against archrival Cyrus Applebee. This campaign gives a loose structure to what is more the life and wisdom of a man without pretensions. ``Fear and guilt are the worst trespassers on a life,'' he asserts. ``They're both counterproductive, they take up a lot of time, and they're antisocial.'' Hiram has a hand in various business enterprises that include providing the other residents with cheap prescriptions; he also organizes excursions to local sights, takes courses, and does a great deal of visiting. Meantime, as he describes his activities and offers his insights, he introduces the community to us: Widows, like Mary Smiley, who can't take care of their lawns but still dress up; unusual men like former bullfighter Caesar Medina, who reads a lot; Vance Petrale, who cultivates bonsai; Jake Marley, who fishes; and the women Hiram loves, sometimes chastely, like Charlene Dickerson, and sometimes not, like Mrs. Mylapore. The election is a shoo-in, and Hiram anticipates another busy year: When he dies, he says, he wants people to say, ``Just as well, he was all used up.'' Sometimes the humor is strained, but Van Wert's Hiram is more than a folksy wit and wisecracker: Here's a contemporary hero who fights back, refrains from self-pity, and always speaks his mind. A wonderfully fresh voice. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Real Story of Being Old,
By A Customer
This review is from: WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?: A Novel of Life, Love, and Key Lime Pie (Hardcover)
This author gives you the real insight to being 80,
it was a fast moving book that held your interest
all the way through, I could not put the book down.
It is interesting that the author is not the age of
the main character but yet understands the life of
this character extremely well. On a serious note, is
there anyway to stop the aging and not be part of
the result. However, we know what that means and
the alternative is not what I want to I guess I'll
be part of the result. Thanks to this author for
such a warm, humorous, loving depiction of old age.
I strongly recomment this book to any and all.
--Joseph Ostraw
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