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Pontoon
- A Novel of Lake Wobegon
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
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Publisher's summary
Critic reviews
- Audie Award Winner, Narration by the Author or Authors, 2008
"There's plenty of fun to be had with the well-timed deadpans and homespun wit." (Publishers Weekly)
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- Narrated by: Judith Ivey
- Length: 14 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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When Vivi and Siddalee Walker, an unforgettable mother-daughter team, get into a savage fight over a New York Times article that refers to Vivi as a "tap-dancing child abuser", the fallout is felt from Louisiana to New York to Seattle. Siddalee, a successful theater director with a huge hit on her hands, panics and postpones her upcoming wedding to her lover and friend, Connor McGill. Vivi's intrepid gang of lifelong girlfriends, the Ya-Yas, sashay in and conspire to bring everyone back together.
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As usual the book is better than the movie
- By Denzil and Judy's Account on 03-25-10
By: Rebecca Wells
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Chanel Bonfire
- By: Wendy Lawless
- Narrated by: Wendy Lawless
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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By the time Wendy Lawless turned 17, she'd known for quite some time that she didn't have a normal mother. But that didn't stop her from wanting one.... Georgann Rea didn't bake cookies or go to PTA meetings; she wore a mink coat and always had a lit Dunhill plugged into her cigarette holder. She went through men like Kleenex, and didn't like dogs or children. Georgann had the ice queen beauty of a Hitchcock heroine and the cold heart to match.
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Not an Engaging Listen
- By Sobriquet on 03-13-13
By: Wendy Lawless
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Homesick for Another World
- Stories
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Alyssa Bresnahan, Richard Poe
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities.
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Funny, Dynamic Writing
- By Sofia Macht on 06-13-18
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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Plantation
- A Lowcountry Tale
- By: Dorothea Benton Frank
- Narrated by: Susie Breck
- Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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When Caroline Wimbley Levine learns that her mother, Miss Lavinia, has supposedly gone mad, she leaves the big city bustle of Manhattan and returns to Tall Pines Plantation. Caroline originally left Tall Pines to escape her feisty, eccentric mother and her drunken brother, Trip. When Miss Lavinia dies, Caroline is forced to come to terms with her family's troubled history as well as her failing relationship with her husband.
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Abridged!!
- By Teresa on 04-18-16
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Kissing Games of the World
- By: Sandi Kahn Shelton
- Narrated by: Myra Platt
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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What if the one person you can't bear to be with is also the one person you can't bear to be without? Jamie McClintock is a free-spirited artist and single mother who has at last found peace and freedom sharing a farmhouse with an elderly man and his young grandson. But when the old man dies suddenly her idyllic country life comes to a halt as the old man's estranged son, Nate, returns to claim the house and his child.
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Great Writer, Great Narrator ! Loved it!
- By Ms. Critic on 05-30-09
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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The Midwife of Hope River
- A Novel of an American Midwife
- By: Patricia Harman
- Narrated by: Anne Wittman
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Midwife Patience Murphy has a gift: a talent for escorting mothers through the challenges of bringing children into the world. Working in the hardscrabble conditions of Appalachia during the Depression, Patience takes the jobs that no one else wants, helping those most in need - and least likely to pay. She knows a successful midwifery practice must be built on a foundation of openness and trust - but the secrets Patience is keeping are far too intimate and fragile for her to ever let anyone in.
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Coal Mines, The Depression, and Lots of Babies
- By Debbie on 03-06-19
By: Patricia Harman
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Vegas Rich
- Vegas, Book 1
- By: Fern Michaels
- Narrated by: Laural Merlington
- Length: 21 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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With a heart full of dreams, Sallie Coleman leaves Texas and heads west determined to get as far from the squalor of her dirt poor beginnings. With its shifting sands, smoky saloons, and bingo palaces, Las Vegas seems like a paradise. A paradise where an extraordinary twist of fate makes Sallie the most powerful businesswoman in Nevada.
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Get this booK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- By Amazon Customer on 09-26-10
By: Fern Michaels
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Wonderful, as expected
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If Lazarus was a writer ?
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I laughed and I cried
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A mysterious virus has infiltrated the good people of Lake Wobegon, transmitted via unpasteurized cheese made by a Norwegian bachelor farmer, the effect of which is episodic loss of social inhibition. Mayor Alice, Father Wilmer, Pastor Liz, the Bunsens and Krebsbachs, formerly taciturn elders, burst into political rants, inappropriate confessions, and rhapsodic proclamations, while their teenagers watch in amazement. Meanwhile, a wealthy outsider is buying up farmland for a Keep America Truckin' motorway and amusement park.
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Really looked forward to this but.....
- By Maggie & Kates Mom on 10-17-20
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Liberty
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Lake Wobegon is in a frenzy of preparations for the Fourth of July. The town is dizzy with anticipation - until they hear of Clint's ambition to run for Congress. They know about his episodes with vodka sours, his rocky marriage, and his friendship with the 24-year-old who dresses up as the Statue of Liberty for the parade and may be buck naked beneath her robes. In Keillor's words, "It is Lake Wobegon as you imagined it - good loving people who drive each other crazy."
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Great for a long country drive.
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Wonderful, as expected
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I laughed and I cried
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A mysterious virus has infiltrated the good people of Lake Wobegon, transmitted via unpasteurized cheese made by a Norwegian bachelor farmer, the effect of which is episodic loss of social inhibition. Mayor Alice, Father Wilmer, Pastor Liz, the Bunsens and Krebsbachs, formerly taciturn elders, burst into political rants, inappropriate confessions, and rhapsodic proclamations, while their teenagers watch in amazement. Meanwhile, a wealthy outsider is buying up farmland for a Keep America Truckin' motorway and amusement park.
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Really looked forward to this but.....
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Lake Wobegon is in a frenzy of preparations for the Fourth of July. The town is dizzy with anticipation - until they hear of Clint's ambition to run for Congress. They know about his episodes with vodka sours, his rocky marriage, and his friendship with the 24-year-old who dresses up as the Statue of Liberty for the parade and may be buck naked beneath her robes. In Keillor's words, "It is Lake Wobegon as you imagined it - good loving people who drive each other crazy."
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Great for a long country drive.
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Fourteen-year-old Gary, a self-described "tree toad" (lover of a perfect lawn, the soft-porn masterpiece of 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 distresseddamsel.
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Very Nice Surprise for Me
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That Time of Year
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In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures.
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Fascinating Journey of a Unique American
- By David of Oyster Bay on 01-29-21
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Boom Town
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Return to America’s most beloved fictional hometown! Lake Wobegon is having a boom year thanks to millennial entrepreneurship—AuntMildred’s.com Gourmet Meatloaf, for example, or Universal Fire, makers of artisanal firewood seasoned with sea salt. Meanwhile, the author flies in to give eulogies at the funerals of five classmates, including a couple whom he disliked, and he finds a wave of narcissism crashing on the rocks of Lutheran stoicism.
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Hope you aren't conservative in any way.
- By Thomas S. Ashton on 04-27-22
By: Garrison Keillor
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Wobegon Boy
- By: Garrison Keillor
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From the millions of listeners who follow the tales of Lake Wobegon and A Prairie Home Companion every Saturday night on public radio, and for fans of Garrison Keillor's literary take on life in our times, this audiobook will be most welcome.
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This Book Makes you Think
- By Lynda on 02-06-05
By: Garrison Keillor
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Stories
- By: Garrison Keillor
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In this delightful audio collection, Garrison Keillor reads 14 of his own favorite stories from his many years as a writer for The New Yorker and from two of his best-selling books, Happy To Be Here and We Are Still Married. These selections embody all of the qualities that make Keillor such a beloved storyteller; his effortless blending of humor and poignancy, his keen observations and gentle insights, and his rare ability to bring a sense of truth to every tale he tells.
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good for fans
- By Chris Dorosky on 12-06-05
By: Garrison Keillor
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The Book of Guys
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In this collection of stories you'll meet a bunch of memorable guys including Lonesome Shorty, a cowpoke torn between the proud life in the saddle and the comforts of warm apartments and women; Buddy, the teen-age leper in Sioux Falls; Earl Grey, the great tea inventor and former Republican child; Casey, at the bat in Mudville again; Dionysus, the god of wine; and Roy Bradley, boy broadcaster.
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Intriguing but too depressing
- By Tim Jorgensen on 08-09-06
By: Garrison Keillor
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The Road Home
- Stories from Lake Wobegon
- By: Garrison Keillor
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From America's favorite storyteller, here are 18 new tales of Lake Wobegon, handpicked from live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion.
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Not Worth Full Price
- By Paul on 11-13-17
By: Garrison Keillor
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WLT
- A Radio Romance
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In the spring of 1926, the Soderbjerg brothers, Ray and Roy, plunge into radio by founding Station WLT (With Lettuce and Tomato) in order to rescue their failing restaurant and become the Sandwich Kings of South Minneapolis. For the next 25 years, the "Friendly Neighbor" station produces a dazzling array of shows and stars: Dad Benson, Wingo Beals, Slim Graves and his Blue Movers, chain-smoking child star Little Becky, and household-tips maven Lucille Larson (who repeatedly broadcasts in her underwear).
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Funny!
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Garrison Keillor at the 92nd Street Y
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Garrison Keillor, host of A Prarie Home Companion and best-selling author of The Book of Guys, Lake Wobegon Days, and Wobegon Boy, discusses the meaning of Lake Wobegon in his books.
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I will always be in Lake Wobegon with you
- By Chris Bushnell on 01-16-21
By: Garrison Keillor
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Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny
- By: Garrison Keillor
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On the 12th floor of the Acme Building, on a cold February day in St. Paul, Guy Noir looks down the barrel of a loaded revolver in the hands of geezer gangster Joey Roast Beef, who is demanding to hear what lucrative scheme Guy is cooking up with stripper-turned-women's-studies-professor Naomi Fallopian. Everyone wants to know, and Guy faces them one by one, as he and Naomi pursue a dream of earning gazillions by selling a surefire method of dramatic weight loss.
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funny noir spoof
- By Darryl on 07-13-14
By: Garrison Keillor
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Good Poems
- Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor
- By: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and others
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor
- Length: 4 hrs and 23 mins
- Abridged
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Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence. It features the work of classic poets, such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, as well as the work of contemporary greats such as Howard Nemerov, Charles Bukowski, Donald Hall, Billy Collins, Robert Bly, and Sharon Olds Good Poems includes poems about lovers, children, failure, everyday life, death, and transcendence.
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Very good, but. . .
- By KSmith on 01-27-11
By: Emily Dickinson, and others
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Me
- by Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente, as Told to Garrison Keillor: A Political Satire
- By: Garrison Keillor
- Narrated by: Garrison Keillor, Tim Russell
- Length: 3 hrs and 12 mins
- Abridged
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He's big. He's bold. He's brash. And as the new governor of Minnesota, Jimmy (Big Boy) Valente is the most compelling figure to appear on the state - and national - political landscape in decades.
The new King of American Politics (and former UWA World Champion) tells all to best-selling author, public radio show host, and fellow Minnesotan Garrison Keillor. This is satire at its best, delivered as only Keillor can.
By: Garrison Keillor
What listeners say about Pontoon
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Shel
- 10-01-07
Brillliant but not lighthearted
Did the person who wrote the "publisher's summary" even read the book? Definitely not. First of all, it is not about "Dede" (or Debbie as she is really called in the book), it is really about Evelyn (who is NOT Debbie's aunt. No relation) and her life/death/family/town/bowling ball. There were NO mormon missionaries, only Lutheran pastors from Denmark who were being sent on a tour of the USA to get them out of their Bishop's hair. It is terrific Garrison Keillor, I give it top marks. However, those looking for Mr. K's lightheartedness and endless chuckles, need to know that this one is dark. Terrific , but you will be crying more than you are laughing. As a former Midwestern Lutheran I certainly did. Very real characters. Very well done. Read by GK, as no one else could really do it justice. Check a synopsis somewhere else, though since Highbridge Audio couldn't bother to get someone to write one properly.
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120 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Kenneth
- 04-02-09
I was expecting a bit more humor
I liked the book and I am a big fan of PHC but..
I was expecting a bit more humor. I was also surprised by the adult episodes.. I would not recommend this book as suitable for all ages.
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16 people found this helpful
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Overall
- LJ Web
- 10-14-08
Vintage Keillor
Those of us who've been listening to PHC for several decades recognize as familiar old friends pretty much every thread in this story, but we don't mind. It's the human condition. Some people complain about Garrison's deadpan delivery on this audio book, but not those of us who love him...his mere voice reminds of us a generous, quirky view of life that comes along with it.
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15 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Sharon
- 01-21-08
Laugh out loud funny!
Keillor takes us on a wild and hilarious ride with characters who feel like people from my own home town. I smiled through the whole thing and laughed so hard I cried at the crazy and joyous end! At turns amusing and sweetly sad, this book left me feeling like I had just spent time with an old friend who had caught me up on the "goings on" back home. I can only hope someone picks up the movie rights - I'd love to see this on the big screen!
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14 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Berri
- 11-01-07
pontoon
Better than the rest of his stories and the ending is worth it all
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14 people found this helpful
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Overall
- LB in Dallas
- 10-24-07
Offbeat Entertainment
I had to rewind and listen again a few times to follow the whacko story but it ends up amusing even if you don't catch every thread. Typical Keillor, but not his best. I enjoyed the northern midwest absurdity of it all. A few great laughs are always good for the soul.
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14 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Cynthia K
- 10-13-07
Laughed out loud!
Typical Garrison Keillor -- if you're a fan you'll like this one. Not necessarily for a road trip with the kids, though, due to discussions of sex and death. I really enjoyed it, and laughed out loud a number of times. Even though the end is predictable, the buildup to it is enjoyable and fun. I'll listen to it again.
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- Janice
- 07-08-14
Geezer-Lit . . . in a good way
Is there such a category as “geezer-lit”? If not, this book could start a new literary genre as I expect only those over the age of 50 have sufficient life experience to appreciate the humor and insights that make this wonderful tale hilarious, poignant, wise and affectionate all at the same time.
Introduced to Evelyn on the last evening of her life, enjoying a somewhat raucous dinner with her best friends, I was laughing so hard I had to pee. Then she was gone and her daughter Barbara had to pick up the pieces and plan Evelyn’s unique memorial according to instructions left in a wonderful letter that actually begins Barbara’s awakening (and ours too if we have the ears to hear).
There are other story lines that are outrageous and revealing in their own ways, but it’s Evelyn’s spirit winding through the tale that keeps some grounded, some inspired, and often both at the same time. As one rapidly reaching geezer-hood, I enjoyed the connection to family and community, and the message of living life to its fullest on your own terms. Life has no dress rehearsal and once the curtain comes down the play is over and regrets are wasted time. That message was Evelyn’s best gift to Barbara.
GK’s reading has his usual quirky pauses and breaths, and it took at bit to get used to. But really, there is no other voice that can tell a Lake Wobegon tale. It was a perfect match.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Jefferson
- 03-25-15
"there are no answers, just stories"
Garrison Keillor's Pontoon (2007) is a novel whose chapters read like a linked set of short stories focusing primarily on the death of 82-year old, life-embracing Evelyn Peterson and its effect on her surviving family and friends and secondarily on the return to Lake Woebegone of "that tramp" Debbie Detmer for her quasi-wedding "commitment" ceremony. Keillor tells his tale via the memories, letters, back-stories, and current concerns, etc. of a variety of characters, including Evelyn, her lover Raoul, her daughter Barbara (the protagonist of the novel), Barbara's university sophomore son Kyle, Debbie, and Debbie's father.
Lake Woebegone is a largely Lutheran and muchly Norwegian Minnesota small town, and Keillor depicts both its negative and positive sides: it's "a culture of fussy women and silent angry men and horrified children," but "It's peaceful here. . . you can be just who you are." Keillor enjoys lists (varieties of booze being dumped gurgling down a sink drain, garage sale items spread out on card tables, and so on). He loves people, especially quirky ones, humorously, ruthlessly, and sympathetically exposing their foibles, fears, aspirations, delusions, disasters, and memories. His riffs on his fictional characters make them feel real. He makes the idiosyncratic natural and the typical interesting. He expresses much seasoned wisdom on families, marriage, religion, and life.
Keillor's tone, established by the first line of the novel ("Evelyn was an insomniac, so when they say she died in her sleep you have to question that"), is wry. And his humor can sting, as when Barbara contemplates Branson, Missouri, "a geezer resort, where the face-lifted stars of yesteryear go on singing their hits, like demented robots, eyes glazed, a sort of mortuary of pop music." But usually his targets deserve a little zinging, like Barbara's old classmate Marcy, "one of those mean women who developed hugging tendencies late in life, as if that made up for everything." Keillor's humor may attain an oddly affecting numinous counterpoint, as in his description of a statue in a grotto: "A dog lay at the end of his chain, his chin on the ground, pawing at the grass in front of a bathtub half-buried vertically in the ground, the half above ground forming a little grotto for a statue of the Blessed Virgin, arms outstretched, pity in her blank eyes. He had pawed a bare spot at her feet. A dog's homage." And he is a master of the savory, apt line, as when he mentions a radio baseball announcer's voice sounding "like a string of taffy, stretching" on a day marked by "A heavy air of Sunday boredom. Benign, indifferent, dozy."
Perhaps the climax, involving an aging pontoon boat, a pair of giant fiberglass pedal-powered duck decoys, a hot air balloon, a speed boat, a homemade parasail, a bowling ball on a chain, a naked young man, a malodorous dog with a wet, cold nose, and 24 tipsy agnostic Danish Lutheran pastors, is a stretch too far and a touch too contrived, and perhaps Keillor indulges in a wee bit too much eccentric minor character history (as when he has a parachuting Elvis impersonator recount his life story, beginning with killing his best friend in a youthful hunting accident and climaxing with being grabbed by the first President Bush's bodyguards), but overall his style and vision are pleasurable to imbibe, and he is capable of intensely moving revelation.
Some words about the audiobook read by Keillor. His reading is idiosyncratic, savory, appealing. He pauses where pauses wouldn't ordinarily be: "her old suede [pause] jacket" and "For he shall feed his flock [pause] like a shepherd." Or, less often, he speeds through places where pauses ordinarily would be: "Barbara is somewhat tightly wound, not the person you'd choose for the job of finding dead people. [no pause] She shrieked, she clutched at her mother's hand, shrank back from the body, knocked a lamp off the bedside table, yelped, ran out of the room into the kitchen where she tried to collect herself, and took a deep breath and thought 'homicide' and looked around for signs of violence." He drawls downward the last syllables of the last words in phrases, not unlike a deeper-voiced, bucolic Bukowski: "a hubcap for an ASHtraaaaay." Keillor can purr along in his own rhythm (sometimes independent of his own commas and periods) because he is the Writer reading his Work and he knows what he's doing and it works. Short piano pieces aptly and pleasingly close each chapter.
I enjoyed this, the first book by Keillor I have read, and recommend it to people who like humorous and moving tales of eccentric, flawed, and sympathetic denizens of American small towns.
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- Linda
- 05-28-14
An enjoyable look at life in a small town.
I put off listening to this because I've listened to Garrison Keillor before, and although I have enjoyed him, I've been into more action/adventure lately and planned to listen to another one. While scrolling through my Audible books I ran across "Pontoon" and decided it was time for a change of pace. I'm so glad I did. Life in Lake Wobegon is quite interesting. The characters are carefully drawn and make you feel like these are people you could know. It was sad, happy, and funny. If you ever lived in a small town, this will bring back memories of those days. However, it is a story anybody can immensely enjoy. Loved it.
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