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Puttering About in a Small Land Kindle Edition

by Philip K. Dick (Author)

12 customer reviews

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When Roger and Virginia Lindhal enroll their son Gregg in Mrs. Alt's Los Padres Valley School in the mountains of Southern California, their marriage is already in deep trouble.

Then the Lindhals meet Chic and Liz Bonner, whose two sons also board at Mrs. Alt's school. The meeting is a catalyst for a complicated series of emotions and traumas, set against the backdrop of suburban Los Angeles in the early fifties. The buildup of emotional intensity and the finely observed characterizations are a hallmark of Philip K. Dick's work.

This is a realistic novel filled with details of everyday life and skillfully told from three points of view. It is powerful, eloquent, and gripping.

Length: 320 pages

Word Wise: Enabled

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

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Product Details

File Size: 705 KB
Print Length: 320 pages
Publisher: Tor Books; Reprint edition (December 8, 2009)
Publication Date: December 8, 2009
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B003H4I4L8
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Not Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #884,741 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #68279 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary
- #77731 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction
- #127465 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy

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Customer Reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars

5 star		33%
4 star		42%
3 star		25%
2 star		0%
1 star		0%

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

My Favorite Mainstream PKD

By David Kleist on November 3, 2000

Format: Paperback

I have a soft spot for this bleakly realistic novel about California life in the 1950's. The main characters are little people, anti-heroes, average Joes, but Dick's psychological insights are superb and singular. I remember one character's description of being popular in elementary school for two days because of making ears from breadcrusts and causing everyone to laugh; and a brilliantly believable internal monologue about getting caught in the act of adultery. Dick's evocations are haunting. He truly was capable of finding the unique and the universal in the quotidian realities of modern life, even when disguised by a wacky SF alternative-realm framework (not here, though). PUTTERING is straight slice-of-life.
I wish someone would make this one into a movie. It's bittersweet, evocative--filled with character like an aged burgundy. Read it.

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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

One of PKD's best mainstream novels

By Eric M. Van on January 25, 1999

Format: Paperback

Eight of the mainstream novels PKD wrote in the fifties have now been published. Everyone agrees that CONFESSIONS OF A CRAP ARTIST is the best; after that, opinions vary quite widely. I'd put this in the top three, but, really, you have to try them and see. This one's an often funny tale of adultery, with terrific characterizations, including one of the most positively portrayed females in all of PKD's work. Like a lot of Dick novels, it explores why we sometimes knowingly and willfully act to bring about our own downfall.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

What Happens on the Road Stays on the Road

By benshlomo on July 1, 2009

Format: Paperback

Puttering About in a Small LandCritical opinion informs us that in his 1950's and early 1960's non-sf work, Philip K. Dick dealt with suburban life on the west coast. How many besides me automatically assume that any novel from that time, set in the suburbs, must necessarily deal with adultery? Show of hands, please - yeah, most of us. Well, "Puttering About" certainly deals with cheating spouses, to a greater extent than maybe anything else PKD ever wrote. On the other hand, this author never treated classic stories in a classic fashion. Let's see how he handled a story about musical beds.

Here's the setup - Virginia and Roger Lindahl, a squabbling Los Angeles couple who own a television shop, enroll their young son Gregg in an Ojai boarding school. They agree to share weekend driving chores with another set of parents, Chic and Liz Bonner. Ojai is about 70-80 miles from Los Angeles, and the husband of one couple finds himself on a long road trip with the wife of the other couple. Hijincks ensue.

As I hinted above, this is pretty typical stuff for a certain kind of late-50s American storytelling. On the other hand, "Puttering About" does not restrict itself to the story of the affair. You get a wide spectrum of postwar American experience, including some flashbacks to the Lindahls' lives before and after their marriage. They have lived through some big changes, moving with America from a more rural lifestyle to a more urban one, and moving with America through World War II and the postwar economic boom.Read more ›

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

A strong novel of 1950s manners and morals

By Doug Mackey on June 2, 2004

Format: Paperback

The title of this realist novel, written in 1957 but not published until 1985, refers to the "small land" of Roger Lindahl's TV repair shop. His wife, Virginia is ambitious, and ends up taking control of the business and expanding it into a large appliance store; but she, as much as Roger or any of the other characters, exists in the small land of her own mind. California, the land of opportunity which had lured the Lindahls from the East coast, is small in its own way: the deadening conventionality of 1950s manners and morals contract the range of human happiness there as elsewhere. Into this wasteland a fertilizing influence appears in the person of Liz Bonner. Roger finds her refreshingly uninhibited and sensual. In its concentration on the triangle of Roger, Liz, and Virginia, Dick fully develops the psychological dynamics of marital and extramarital relations. His sometimes fantastic descriptions of the wasteland of the "small land" of this novel anticipate the entropic landscapes of his later science-fiction novels such as Martian Time-Slip and Ubik.

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

Insights into human relationships not usually expressed

By A. G. Plumb on February 22, 2001

Format: Paperback

I loved this novel. The reactions the adulterers experience after their one 'affair' are so atypical of drama, film, TV but I suspect so accurate of human life. We can all learn many things from reading Dick's novels - both SF and otherwise. Somehow - even in extreme environments (which this novel does not show) - he shows everyday reality of the human mind.

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

Technically innovative, 4th best mainstream (IMHO)

By Guy Salvidge on September 19, 2000

Format: Paperback

'Puttering' simultaneously details the breakdown of the marriage of the protagonists and how they first met and came together. What I find interesting in PKD's mainstream novels in the historical info about the time and the place. His futures were often sketchy but his presents were always rich, and this is a book where this comes to life. It is a book about relationships and adultery, and is one not to miss.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

50's Domestic Life ... Not So Blissful

I've read a few of PKD's sci-fi books, but this was my first non-sci-fi by him, and I was very impressed! It was very well written. Read more

Published on May 25, 2013 by Amazon Customer

Slow to start but finished much better

I've read 2/3 of PKD's works now, even the off-stuff and found this one simply uninteresting. I felt somewhat like I was reading about a mild version of an early daytime soap... Read more

Published on May 1, 2012 by SoylentGreen

terribly disappointing

I am most familiar with Philip K. Dick's science fiction: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, A Scanner Darkly, Adjustment Team. Unfamiliar with this title, I gave it a shot. Read more

Published on April 24, 2012 by doc peterson

Blade Runner Author Delivers Scary Thriller

"An overwhelming indictment of Los Angeles suburban life in this sensitive and catastrophic story of two couples and their children. Read more

Published on January 20, 2010 by BookManBookWoman TV REVIEWS

Underrated PKD

Pretty slow, but full of utterly believable characters that I really cared about (even though they're pretty messed up people).

Published on November 12, 2004 by Grilch

Good, but lacks the energy of his S.F.

This book, a story about a TV repairman and his family in 1950's California, contains many of the elements contained in Dick's science fiction novels: bleak emotional landscapes;... Read more

Published on April 9, 2002 by miles@riverside

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