Product Description

In his fourth Lake Wobegon novel, Garrison Keillor returns to the little town that time forgot.

The fictional Minnesota town of Lake Wobegon is real to millions of A Prairie Home Companion fans, who tune in each week for the latest news about its strong women and good-looking men. Like Sinclair Lewis's Gopher Prairie, it is part of literary legend. Four novels have been set among its quiet streets: Lake Wobegon Days, Wobegon Boy, Lake Wobegon Summer 1956, and now Pontoon.

Garrison Keillor's latest book is about the wedding of a girl named Dede Ingebretson, who comes home from California with a guy named Brent. Dede has made a fortune in veterinary aromatherapy; Brent bears a strong resemblance to a man wanted for extortion who's pictured on a poster in the town's post office. Then there's the memorial service for Dede's aunt Evelyn, who led a footloose and adventurous life after the death of her husband. Add a surprise boyfriend and a band of newly arrived Mormon missionaries, and the gently rendered chaos is complete.

Full of richly drawn characters, sly wit, and indelible descriptions of everyday life in the heartland, Pontoon is another unforgettable portrait of the little town we love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #585214 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-11
• Formats: Audiobook, Unabridged
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 7
• Binding: Audio CD

From Publishers Weekly
In the wake of Evelyn's death, the residents of Lake Wobegon ride higher waves of absurdity and simplicity than ever before. Her last words reveal a whole other life few knew about and cast a wide net of influence on the community, not the least of which includes her daughter and grandson. In his idiosyncratic manner, Keillor brings to life the town of Lake Wobegon with spiraling arcs of tales, vignettes and sketches of its residents that pull together into a reflective commentary on the journey from crib to crypt. Keillor has decades of radio experience and a velvety voice and cadence that instantly charms listeners. His deep voice is tempered by a soft and deliberate delivery that can often be melodious and sinewy. Though his female characters only vaguely distinguish themselves from one another, it does not distract from the narration as a whole. One surprising distraction of this audiobook's production: throughout, as Keillor finishes with a page, he audibly flips to the next.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
When the angel of death came for Evelyn Peterson, she didn't know that Debbie Detmer would be back in Lake Wobegon for the first time in ages to be married, kinda, in a big lakeside ceremony on a pontoon boat with, among other things, a parachuting Elvis impersonator and a hot-air balloon—all on the day Evelyn's memorial, also at the lake, would be held. Of course, how could she know that? Nobody else in town knew Debbie was coming, except for her parents, and given how Walter's been since that fall in the bathroom, maybe only Mrs. D. could be said to have known. During the days 'twixt death and marriage, lots happens. Barbara, Evelyn's daughter, learns that her mother hadn't been visiting relatives on her many out-of-town jaunts; she'd been partying with Raoul, the man she should have married. Barbara's son Kyle decides to honor Grandma's wish to have her ashes deposited in the lake by dropping them while parasailing. Now consider the possibilities with faux Elvis, balloon, and Kyle fleeting over the lake simultaneously . . . It's just the capper to a hyperbusy slice of small-town life of the sort that Keillor regularly exploits so hilariously and affectingly, and the moral of which may be that we'd all best be humble. Only comedian of horrors Christopher Moore, in his tales of Pine Cove, California, rivals Keillor as a provincial farceur. Olson, Ray

Review
Keillor has . . . a velvety voice and cadence that instantly charms. His deep voice is tempered by a soft and deliberate delivery that can often be melodious and sinewy. Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly )

“Keillor has . . . a velvety voice and cadence that instantly charms. His deep voice is tempered by a soft and deliberate delivery that can often be melodious and sinewy.”
     —Publishers Weekly (Publishers Weekly )

Customer Reviews

Noboby's better at humor mixed with pathos
It's been about four years since the last Wobegone book, LAKE WOBEGONE SUMMER 1956. That one featured Gary, Keillor's alter ego. I didn't really like it until I heard excerpts from it in one of Keillor's Prairie Home Companion PBS specials. Suddenly, it got a whole lot better. The man has the best "radio" voice since Jean Shepherd.

I liked PONTOON a little bit better because these characters seem a whole lot more real. Evelyn Peterson is an 82-year-old Lutheran lady who dies at the beginning of the book. She had no time for funerals. She wants to be cremated, her ashes put in a bowling ball and thrown in a lake. She leaves a letter for daughter Barbara outlining her wishes. Barbara also discovers letters from Raoul, a lover she never knew her mother had. If you live in Minnesota you'll recognize Raoul. He's a moderator of a children's show that featured THE LITTLE RASCALS who sounds a whole lot like Clelland Card, creator of "Axel and his Dog."

The other featured character is Debbie Detmer, who had left Wobegone to make her fortune in Hollywood. She did, all right, but in a rather strange profession, aroma therapist to pets. This is just Keillor cracking wise. An aroma therapist to dogs is no stranger than tourists who visit the bathroom where Senator Craig was arrested.

Occasionally Keillor will throw in a poem or a song lyric that I would guess come from his show. "Oh the horses stood around with their feet upon the ground and who will wind my wristwatch when I'm gone? We feed the baby garlic so we can find him in the dark, and a girl's best friend is her mother" is a sample. He can also get down-right philosophical: "The trick is to not want it that much. Want it less. When you get to where you don't want it all, then you might get it." Nobody does pathos mixed with humor as well as Keillor.

Keillor also seems to be suggesting that living in Wobegone might not be the best sort of life decision to make. Evelyn only started to live when she hit her seventies, traveling all sorts of places with Raoul. Her cremation and burial in a bowling ball is a message to her daughter to live life to the fullest, not to settle for a staid existence.

An enchanting read from a master storyteller
Garrison Keillor, best known for his long-running radio saga A Prairie Home Companion, has created another memorable portrait of the Midwest in Pontoon. His fictitious farming town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota is populated by Scandinavian descendants whose lives revolve around church services and gossip, not necessarily in that order. The town's two religious beacons are the Catholic parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility and the Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church. The residents are proud of their Scandinavian heritage, including the town statue of the Unknown Norwegian and omnipresent lutefisk at church functions.

I grew up listening to Garrison on A Prairie Home Companion and attempted (unsuccessfully) to watch the recent Robert Altman film adaptation, so when I saw Pontoon, I snapped it up. Part of my love affair with Lake Wobegon stems from my own immigrant background; my grandmother immigrated from Poland in 1913, and my youth was spent at Polish masses and social gatherings (in Polish, of course!) filled with pierogi and gossip, much like Lake Wobegonians (minus the lutefisk, thankfully). I also grew up in a small Midwest town, so I could appreciate Garrison's good-natured ribbing at the monotony of life in small towns.

Garrison's characters are exquisitely drawn, and you can easily imagine them to be your next-door neighbors, full of idiosyncrasies and hidden wisdom. In Pontoon, the central character is Evelyn, an octogenarian with a passion for life who enjoys shocking the quieter Wobegonians with her forward ideas. Evelyn's sudden death wreaks havoc on her family, particularly on her alcoholic daughter Barbara, since her scandalous final wish is to be cremated and dumped into Lake Wobegon in a green bowling ball. Needless to say, this is unacceptable behavior in a conservative Midwestern town.

As the novel unfolds in hilariously unexpected twists and turns, a number of Wobegonians' lives intersect. Exiled Debbie Detmer returns from California a millionaire for a "ceremony of commitment." No weddings for this New Age guru, thankyouverymuch, but a hot air balloon and parachuting Elvis impersonator share the bill with imported French cheese, champagne, and world-class chefs flown in from California. Meanwhile, Barbara's son Kyle is thinking about ditching his girlfriend and dropping out of college to start a business involving sprinkling loved ones' ashes from a parasail. Pastor Inqvist is playing host to two dozen renegade Danish Lutheran pastors. At the hysterical climax, these and other stories intertwine in the blink of an eye during Evelyn's fateful memorial service on Lake Wobegon.

The writing is crisp and snappy, and I particularly loved the flashbacks to 1941 as Evelyn's secret lifelong romance with Raoul was revealed. Spunky Evelyn has many lessons to teach all of us about regret, seizing opportunity, and how to enjoy life to its fullest right until the end. By turns tender, philosophical, and laugh-out-loud funny, Pontoon is a must-read. Be sure to check out the detailed map of Lake Wobegon on the dust jacket!

Keillor makes a comeback!
Having at one time been a huge fan, I had pretty much declared myself completely finished with reading or listening to Garrison Keillor--done with hearing him in love with the sound of breathing through his nose on the Writer's Almanac, done with his increasingly indulgent weekend radio show (and the sycophantic and pretentious NPR listeners that praise it), and done with that horribly boring and eventless movie based on his work--when someone gave me this.

I listened to it, for lack of anything else to listen to on my morning drive, and I have to say: I liked it. It's good.

The characters, for the most part seem real and believable, the action is amusing, and the writing is clear and often funny.

"Pontoon" tells the antilinear story of a woman's death--of her life before it, of her family, of her neighbors, and it manages to entwine all of these lives into an amusing (if somewhat predictable and drawn-out and over-the-top) ending. It's touching and funny at the same time, and is, with one or two exceptions, a fairly accurate portrait of how small-town life can be.

As another entry in the Lake Wobegon canon, it's solid--not as good as "Lake Wobegon Days" or even "Wobegon Boy," but much better than say, "Leaving Home." On the audio version, Keillor does a good job of reading it, and I was grateful that some producer thought wisely enough to place the mic away from his wheezy nostrils. I mean, seriously, listen to the Writer's Almanac some morning; it sounds as if he's just finished running before every episode, or as if he just chugged a pan of grease. The guy's evidently in love with the sound of it, like a guitarist who likes to mic the sounds of his fingers squeaking down the frets. You can almost hear his nosehairs rustling.

Anyway. "Pontoon": a good book. And a good audio book.

Check it out.