- Paperback: 336 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition edition (1 Mar 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571195636
- ISBN-13: 978-0571195633
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.2 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 898,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Last seen leaving home in Lake Wobegon Days, John Tollefson is now a forty-something bachelor running a public-radio station at a 'mouldering Episcopalian College' in upstate New York. John's tribulations - his gloomy, neurotic staff, his controlling boss, a disastrous speech at a public-radio conference, the bankruptcy of a sweetcorn restaurant in which he is partners with his lawyer, his bumpy relationship with his querulous father - are set alongside his passionate romance with the lawyer's sister Alida Freeman, a Columbia University historian who is writing a book about Abraham Lincoln's holistic healer.
First a career crisis, then a family crisis take John back to Lake Wobegon, where the Tollefson family and assorted Lake Wobegon residents past and present - Mr Berge, Dorothy, Florian, Myrtle and Wally - sit in the Sidetrack Tap and the Chatterbox Cafe telling their stories. Wobegon Boy is a wonderful example of Garrison Keillor's funny and tender writing about small-town American life in the late 20th Century.
About the Author
Garrison Keillor lives in St Paul, Minnesota, home of A Prairie Home Companion, his radio show that has been on the air since 1974. He wrote and appeared in Robert Altman's final film, A Prairie Home Companion and is the author of many books including the Lake Wobegon novels, which include Lake Wobegon Days, Pontoon and Pilgrims.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was prepared to dislike this author, having read reviews that suggested that his books were undemanding and too "cute". I was very pleasantly surprised. Though there is not a great deal of action in this story, the characters and relationships are well portrayed and I genuinely found myself caring what happened to John, the fortyish hero who felt he hadn't quite made his mark on life. As the story unfolds, contentment gradually creeps up on John as he learns more about his ancestors' lives. I was reminded of a more cheerful Anne Tyler - the same sense of small-town life never changing much was there, but with a warm and upbeat atmosphere in which loving friends and relatives make all the difference. I can't wait to get to the library and read more!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have read 6 of Garrison Keillor's books, and have enjoyed this one the most. His writing is very impressive, especially the way he can spin out a story adding humorous detail after humorous detail. An impressive talent. He has a keen eye for detail, adding humorous observations that are - there's the word again - impressive.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
55 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Lutheran humor
21 Mar 2000
Format:Paperback
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.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
A terrific read, as always
3 Sep 2004
Format:Paperback
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.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Mid-life Humor
12 Jun 2000
Format:Paperback
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.
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