Customer Reviews

Wobegon Boy

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This a brilliant comic novel, featuring the adventures of John Tollefson. He has escaped Lutheran Minnesota to live in upstate New York, where he has taken the job of a local radio station manager. In between return visits to the mythical Wobegon, John romances historian Alida Freeman and embarks on a disastrous business venture with a New Age builder. And that's the plot, such as it is. There isn't a strong narrative thread running throughout this book, and I think that this is one of its strengths. Like many people's lives, John Tollefson's doesn't run to order. This might make for a very incoherent novel, but Keillor carries this off exceptionally well. The humour and wit are exceptional, and make 'Wobegon Boy' a huge pleasure to read. I was sorely disappointed that the book actually had to end, since it had easily put me into a very buoyant mood. Exceptional.

Garrison Keilor is the modern master of the narrative digression, musing on life and what is does to people. The person most being done to here is forty-three-year-old John Tollefson, refugee from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, running an NPR station in a college town in upstate New York. He's an intelligent, quiet, reflective guy, trying to be a Happy Lutheran even though he has dark opinions about talk radio. He falls in love with Alida, a history professor at Columbia, and they see each other one weekend a month, which maybe is preferable to marriage. He has an idea for a "garden restaurant," which ends up a money pit, thanks to the mismanagement of his lawyer, Alida's brother, and the chicanery of an ex-hippie contractor. But, as in most of Keillor's writing, the plot is the least part of the book. The best part is always the telling of tales about family and friends by everyone in the little town, the spinning of yarns about ancestors, the sometimes dark but generally tolerant and amused interweavings of personalities at the Chatterbox Cafe and the Sidetrack Tap. The author himself, of course, is in many ways very much like the characters he portrays, relating the adventures of John's great-uncle, the snake-oil medicine man who served four terms in Congress, and his Aunt Mildred, who flim-flammed the bank where she was a teller and decamped to Buenos Aires, and his own adolescent adventures tipping privies and trying to pick up girls at the roller rink. The set piece is John's coming home for his father's funeral, the gathering of the clan, the service itself, led by his pastor brother-in-law, and the drunken wake at the Sidetrack afterward. As we discover, there are just as many oddballs per family in Lake Wobegon as anywhere else, probably more, and Keillor paints them vividly in more than three dimensions. This is the sort of book that could never be made into a film, but which you will drive your spouse crazy reading aloud passages from.

Like I suspect with other readers, my enjoyment with this book had a lot to do with identification to its places and characters. Born and raised in small town - leave to live in big city - come home again - yada. Being my first Wobegon book, I don't know the extent that Keillor reuses characters, but such continuity would also add to reader interest.

The main character's family relationships were thoughtful, funny and at one point made me cry (a rarity). His new romance was sometimes confusing but satisfying. His wit and sarcasm about everything else was on target, especially from a guy's perspective. Gave me many chuckles

I recommend this book to those aged from mid-life crises on, who have lived at least some of their life in a town where you can count on one hand the number cafés, bars, gas stations or traffic lights. For everyone else, if your only view of small town life is that of quirky, untapped artistic, unsophisticated-by-choice residents like those depicted in the old CBS series Northern Exposure, this book will give you a truer perspective. I probably won't go back and read Keillor's previous books in the series, but I would consider a sequel to this one.

Splendid .... Keillor's best work since Lake Wobegon Days by a mile. Wobegon Boy takes us back to "the town that time forgot," but things are different this time -- we get to look at it through the eyes of a troubled expatriate, swooping down by helicopter from the "real world" with John Tollefson at the controls. In doing so we come to love and understand the place better than ever. It's strangely satisfying to watch Keillor charge out into the world holding the banner of Wobegonian ethos and come back victorious -- as a reader, I could only bask in chivalrous satisfaction between the laughs (and oh boy, are there laughs). Tender and sharp and hilarious and wise, Wobegon Boy is a work of dazzling maturity and insight. Putting it aside for even a moment was painful, and I miss it now that it's gone.

Many readers, I suspect, read "Wobegon Boy" after cultivating a heartfelt endearment to Keillor's radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion." I found this novel in a thrift shop after the cover art caught my eye. It stood on my shelf for years before I finally came around to reading it last summer. "Wobegon Boy" chronicles the life and times of John Tollefson, who leaves Lake Wobegon to make a life for himself in Red Cliff, NY. He meets and falls in love with Alida Freean, visits home, struggles to fulfill his dreams, and along the way we are treated to a cornucopia of tales about his ancestors and family.

Perhaps any other writer attempting this style would fail to capture the sepia-toned nostalgia and compelling absorption of Keillor's structuring and frequent usage of tangential narratives, but Keillor never misses a beat. John's fictional life is as familiar as any real person I've ever met and Keillor's vision brings an abundance of color and dimension to the story John tells and, in turn, learns about his family. At over 300 pages, Keillor has crafted an entertaining, thoughtful, and wonderful story about life, love, romance, family, and history.

Keillor weaves parallels and contrasts seamlessly. For example, there are parallels between Alida's historical research into a famous Norwegian and John's anecdotes about Norwegian heritage; and his romanticism, a tad bit forward for a Lutheran, is familiar to how his father courted his mother, 'I want to be next to you for the rest of my life'. John, despite escaping Lake Wobegon, never truly leaves it. He still entertains the notion, if only subconsciously and peripherally, that the folk back home will recognize his achievements. In fact, John still carries his Lutheran upbringing with him, and the Lake Wobegon ideals of his childhood never disappear from the palate of his adulthood.

Through our narrator, Keillor expresses insight into love, marriage, and the inadvertent silliness of being politically correct. In his benevolent way, Keillor addresses how the frictions of living together can diminish a romance. But neither the author, nor John, shy away from marriage. John wants nothing more than to marry Alida, who is skeptical of that old tradition, and fears it will sour their relationship. But the book offers a light of hope when Alida, despite her reservations, agrees to marry John, after realizing how much she love him; her advice is both practical and heartfelt: "Never get so angry at me that you can't remember how it was today."

This is a terrific novel from a master writer. I recommend this novel, not just to fans of "The Prairie Home Companion", but to anyone who enjoys an absorbing, cozy read on how to deal with people and life itself.

I can't believe how much I'm enjoying this book. I thought Garrison Keillor was famous for kind of funny jokes, sort of corny, jokes that were really were more should-be-funny than funny. I have been really surprised, happily, at the depth of the story and the narrator's (I guess his) comments. Enjoyable.

This is one of the funniest books I've ever read, but under the humor is an undercurrent of anger, in the best sense of the word. Keillor has been pigeonholed as the "Prairie Home Companion guy," and his overwhelming success as a radio personality overshadows his great great writing. The sidestory of John Tollefson's involvement in a "farm restaurant" and the hippie/New Age building contractor who eventually...oh, I won't spoil the plot....is worth the price of the book. At turns laugh-out-loud funny, nasty and sentimental, I've reread this book twice for the sheer pleasure. His best novel.

Warm,funny and down right brillant. Wobegon Boy is a fantastic journey into the world of modern sensibility and homespun common sense. Garrison Keillor creates a great novel that will put a huge smile on your face after you are done with it.

I can't wait to read it again.

Yep, it's true. There are great writers out there who can tell a great story, make us laugh, make us think and make fun of us foolish mortals - all at the same time.

Mr. Keillor is a pro at all of the above. Hats off to his efforts!

Hands Down, This is Garrison Keillor's best novel. A book about the power of love, the dread of family, and the hope we all have to be better. Keillor reintroduces us with some of the characters of his last book" Lake Wobegon Days, and takes their struggles even further. Our hero John goes on a journey of self-discovery with the funnies of predicaments, and ends up in a much better place in the end.

Read this book, it's really a true piece of work from a great master storyteller.