Saving Grandma (Paperback)

~ (Author) "PS. I presume you will put in an appearance as per usual?..." (more)
Key Phrases: praying family, eet ees, dining terrace, Mary Lou, Reverend Bahre, Reverend Keegan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

With the same humor and warmth that distinguished Portofino (Macmillan, 1992), Schaeffer continues the story of Calvin Becker, his missionary family, and the love his life, Jennifer. No matter how the family tries to convince Calvin to spread the word of the Lord and convert Europe's youth, Calvin is much more interested in getting into trouble. After his grandmother breaks her hip and has to move in with the family, the plot really begins to move. A most interesting relationship develops between Calvin and his supposedly evil grandmother. Born to American missionary parents in Switzerland and raised a fundamentalist, Schaeffer also ran away from boarding school; thus, he can give great insight into his protagonist. Portofino will soon be made into a movie, and one can hope the same will happen to the present work. A fine acquisition for all libraries.?Vicki J. Cecil, Hartford City P.L., Ind.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

In a sequel to Portofino (1992), Schaeffer offers an uneven, if sweet-natured, comic tale of a boy's struggle for independence from his often-loony missionary family. Fifteen-year-old Calvin Becker is burdened with two squabbling, goody-goody older sisters, a volatile, quixotic father who's often stricken by dark periods the family calls ``Moods,'' and an emotionally overwrought mother who instructs Calvin to pray for wet dreams so he won't be tempted to masturbate. The Beckers run L'Arche, a Calvinist Presbyterian mission in Switzerland; when the supply of converts runs low, they turn their attention to ``saving'' handicapped children from the home next door. Calvin's only friend, through all this, is Jean-Pierre, a French boy with cerebral palsy who shares with home-schooled Calvin a near-inability to read; Calvin's only true comfort, it seems, is spinning elaborate fantasies about Jennifer, the beautiful English girl he sees for two weeks every year when the Beckers vacation in Italy. Calvin's mom is always crowing about having rescued his father from a coarse, heathen, working-class background, so it's little surprise that when Dad's mean-tempered mother, who spews bad language, racial slurs, and blasphemy in abundance, breaks her hip and comes to stay, the family is thrown into an uproar. Unhinged by stress, Calvin's father manages to escalate an obscure theological dispute with a neighbor into a full-scale feud that almost gets the Beckers expelled from Switzerland. Just when the fracas has settled down, Grandma contracts pneumonia, and when Calvin, who aspires to be a doctor, learns that his parents don't plan to treat her, he smuggles veterinary penicillin to her and saves her life--creating a strange bond between the two and providing the catalyst for Calvin's realization that it's finally time for him to escape for keeps. Good material, though with jokes that are often overplayed and a scattered, episodic structure that slows the story's drive. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425157768
• ISBN-13: 978-0425157763
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,439,796 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best comming of age novel ever, December 12, 1999

By A Customer

After I read Frank Schaeffer's first novel, Portofino I hoped there would be more. there is! Saving Grandma. This has got to be the funniest book on growing up in a religious family ever. It happens to be set in an evangelical Protestant family but Saving speaks to everyone. I grew up in a strict Catholic home and can identify with Calvin, (the books hero) perfectly. Saving is also one of the best books I've ever read when it comes to the innere workings of religion in America, albeit the book is set in a Protestant mission in Switzerland. Anyone who wants to come to terms with the religious nature of our country, and have a good honest laugh along the way will want to read this outstanding book. Frank Schaeffer is our new Mark Twain. Both Saving Grandma and Portofino are a wonderful holliday read. Also My womens group read both books back to back last year and we still all say that they were the best books we've done yet. There were women from all backgrounds, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant as well as agnostic in the group of abpout 12 of us. We ALL loved Saving Grandma and laughed so hard we could hardly get through some chapters.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Sequel to "Portofino", March 3, 2003

By	Michael Huang (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It's even more trouble for the Becker missionary family when the unsaved, uncouth, and unpleasant mother of Ralph Becker moves in to their Switzerland chalet. Young Calvin, now fifteen years old and full of adolescent longing for his girlfriend Jennifer, must put up not only with the thoroughly distasteful antics of his grandmother, but also endure the nasty aftershocks of a church split and watch his father grow more and more unhinged. Though Grandma is unpleasant, over time, he begins to see how perhaps they had more in common than he had thought, which spurs him to think about whether he really belongs in his increasingly loony family at all.

This novel, the sequel to Portofino, takes place two years after the events in that book. It is a longer and less humorous novel than the first, and is also a bit less focused as a result. Schaeffer's best passages, as in the first book, deal with the excesses of the evangelical subculture and in the lovely portraits of the Italian coast, which is largely filtered through Calvin's sex-driven fantasies in this novel. Most of the humor this time comes from aspects that will make evangelicals raise their eyebrows: Grandma's profuse swearing, the lampoons of fundamentalist seperatism, and sex, lots of it, sometimes quite explicit (par for the course for a mainstream literary novel--but really hot for an evangelical novel). Much of the pathos of the book, for this reader, comes from Calvin's intense longing to be with his true love and his alienation from the subculture that his family inhabits and embodies. The combination of the two is still a potent mix, and it is set inside a rollicking, fast-paced narrative that made the book a genuine page-turner from start to finish. Some of the situations seemed a tad exaggerated to be believable (such as the church split situation), but the novel's other strengths readily overcame the brief suspension of belief. I can readily recommend the book in conjunction with Portofino.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another smashing book by Frank Schaeffer! Bravo, Bravo!!!, September 7, 1999

By	Jordan W. Waring (Miami, FL USA) - See all my reviews

One of my favorite books of all time is Portofino. I read it in 1993, shortly after the book came out, and it is a book that I could read time and time again, so likeable is Calvin Becker, so alive the sights and smells of Portofino, and so funny and bittersweet it's insights.

So it was with great anticipation that I read "Saving Grandma", Schaeffer's sequel to Portofino, picking up roughly where the other left off.

I was not at all disappointed. While the book fills you with a little more angst, as you suffer along with Calvin waiting to see how it all turns out, the book is as sweet, as funny, as colorful as Portofino. This book proves that you don't have to write a thriller to write a page turner, I devoured the last 150 pages in one sitting where I got up only to go to the bathroom, and took the book along with me, reading as I walked.

If you liked Portofino, you'll love Saving Grandma. I suggest reading Portofino first, as the two are very much intertwined.

Does anyone know if a follow up book is planned? the ending seemed to suggest it.