Product Description

A Grammy?? nominee. Fourteen-year-old Gary, a self-described "tree toad" lover of a perfect lawn, the soft-porn masterpiece Carnal Cuties, his Underwood typewriter, and, above all, his rebellious cousin Kate" lives through one amazing Lake Wobegon summer. Gary preoccupies himself by spinning fantastic yarns about boogers, talking dogs, conversations between God and Jesus, and especially melodramas featuring himself as hero and Kate as distressed damsel. When the real Kate makes a terrible mistake, Gary learns a lot about love, heartbreak, and what is really means to rebel. In Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, Garrison Keillor describes the making of a writer who comes of age in classic Wobegon style. It's just what his fans have been waiting for: trademark wit, brilliant humor, great storytelling, and an extended stay in "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1077088 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-18
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio CD

From Publishers Weekly
With a four-year hiatus since Wobegon Boy, legions of Keillor faithful will likely hold candlelight vigils in front of their favorite booksellers awaiting the arrival of this long overdue episode in the ongoing checkered history of the fictional Minnesota hamlet. Vacillating between poignant, endearing, outrageous and mocking, this thoroughly engaging, frequently hilarious bildungsroman is narrated by the libidinous, iconoclastic 14-year-old wannabe writer Gary. Recounting the trials and tribulations of coming of age under the smothering influence of the Sanctified Brethren, a religious sect preaching unrelenting hellfire and damnation during the summer of 1956 in the tiny backwater of Lake Wobegon, the somewhat nerdy hero has a sexual fixation on his slightly older cousin Kate, abhors his geeky goody-two-shoes older sister, is obsessed with pornographic sexual fantasies engendered from reading a purloined copy of the verboten magazine High School Orgies, and is preoccupied by such intellectual pursuits as classifying variations of the 10 known categories of flatulence. Given an Underwood typewriter as a bribe from his uncle to tattletale on Kate's romance with a ne'er-do-well local baseball hero, Gary turns to writing pornographic stories about his imagined adventures with Kate before he is serendipitously handed the job of substitute sportswriter for the local paper. Game after game, he is forced to observe Kate's budding romance, until the affair predictably culminates in the age-old biological consequence and the family spins into crisis mode while our hero suffers a broken heart. Although the denouement is more fizzle than bang, avid Keillorites will be left shouting "more." 25-city author tour.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Beloved author and radio persona Keillor (A Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Joke Book) returns once again to Lake Wobegon, the quintessential small town in Minnesota. It is summer, and as the denizens of Lake Wobegon sit on their front porches, listening to the radio and to the swish of sprinklers on their lawns, 14-year-old Gary struggles to find his own place within the community. Gary suffers from all the hormonally induced anxieties of an adolescent boy but bears an added burden his family belongs to an evangelical group of Brethren whose definitions of appropriate behavior are much stricter than those most parents impose on their teenagers. Gary has, by his own admission, been a good boy, but he is now exploring what it means to be bad as "bad" is defined in 1950s Lake Wobegon. Keillor's wry vignettes of Gary's summer of change and turmoil are laced with his trademark self-deprecating humor. This latest will undoubtedly appeal to Keillor's legions of fans and particularly to those with a nostalgia for both the small town and the follies of youth.
- Caroline Hallsworth, Sudbury P.L., Ont.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
The "Prairie Home Companion" host and creator returns to Lake Wobegon as he follows 14-year-old Gary through his coming of age with characteristic dry wit and pointed observations. Keillor's deep voice and slow, deliberate diction transport the listener to this sleepy small town being shaken up by rock and roll. Anyone familiar with Keillor's performances on National Public Radio will welcome this warm return to the heartland. Those visiting Lake Wobegon for the first time will find themselves right at home with Keillor's easy Midwestern drawl. And Keillor's insight into the workings of Gary's mind is heartwarming, poignant, and hilarious as Gary struggles to balance his religion with his raging interest in the female form. H.L.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine