A cozy, meandering, often laugh-out-loud treat.
Amusing domestic tales from the guy’s viewpoint by a Canadian Garrison Keillor.
The central figure in these 19 stories is Dave, a former rock-band road manager who now runs a tiny record shop called the Vinyl Café. Wife Morley is the sort of woman who begins preparing for Christmas in May; Dave is the kind of guy who forgets that he is in charge of the turkey until the night before Thanksgiving. So he sneaks out of the house at 4 a.m. to an all-night store, buys the last remaining turkey (a frozen, 12-pound, grade-B, slashed carcass with a ripped right drumstick that he names Butch), defrosts Butch with a hairdryer and an electric blanket; and when he can’t figure out the automatic oven timer already set for the vegetables, checks into a hotel where room service cooks the turkey for him—all without Morley ever knowing the difference. McLean’s laconic approach makes situations that are not exactly fresh seem rip-roaringly funny. For example, the $563.30 bill for Dave’s unnamed guinea pig, who spends three days at the vet because he’s losing his hair. Or the cat Dave’s sister leaves in his care with a set of instructions that he promptly loses. Or the sleepover birthday party for which he rents Night of the Zombies, scaring prepubescent son Sam and his buddies half to death. Or the friends who leave Dave in charge of periodically “feeding” a spoonful of flour to their sourdough bread starter while they are away; he mistakes Spackle for the flour and has to start another from scratch. Or the time teenage daughter Stephanie accidentally sends her parents the letter intended for her best friend and Dave starts reading her raves about the boys at summer camp: “His eyes flicked down at the page in front of him; he thought he saw the word ‘tongue.’ ”
A cozy, meandering, often laugh-out-loud treat.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-7000-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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