Praise for The New York Times Bestseller
Lake Wobegon Summer 1956
“[Keillor is] a storytelling genius . . . where others might see dysfunction, Garrison Keillor discovers founts of deep affection and humor.... [Lake Wobegon Summer] is a sweet, sweet book . . . and a wonderful evocation of an American childhood, complete with Nehi, Schwinn bikes, playground bullies, drive-ins, the Hardy Boys, booger jokes, John Foster Dulles, necking down by the lakeside, mixers, Ed Sullivan, rhubarb pie, beatnik poetry, Jack Benny and homegrown tomatoes. Sit a spell with it. You’ll enjoy the visit.”
—The Washington Post
“Brilliant ... [and] very funny! . . . As in many of Keillor’s previous books, Lake Wobegon emerges not only as the product of Keillor’s sprawling and essentially caustic imagination, but as a place that seems more three-dimensional all the time. It’s a town steeped in universal foibles, pettiness and hypocrisy yet is full of examples of quiet integrity.”
—The Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Keillor’s Lake Wobegon is not just funny: it can be sad too, and poignant, and very real . . . at least as real as Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Twain’s Hannibal, and some of the Chicago neighborhoods, in Dreiser, Wright, or Bellow.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A delightful comic romp featuring characters who deserve to become legends . . . Think Huckleberry Finn in hormonal overdrive . . . Irresistible.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“No one tells a story better.... In his inimitable style Keillor takes us from point A to B, C, D, etc., never directly, but always with a graceful little dance, a soft-shoe with an occasional tap. . . . He’s Will Rogers with grammar lessons, Aesop without the ax to grind, the common man’s Molière.”
—The Houston Chronicle
“Many of us remember that it was awful to be fourteen years old. Garrison Keillor remembers why. . . . Lake Wobegon Summer 1956 gives Keillor fans full value in laughs and knowing nods . . . the detail is superb.”
—New York Daily News
“A celebration of the ordinary and his role as the observer . . . Of course, this is the genesis of Keillor’s genius, a love for quirky detail, an ear for the comedy of self-righteousness, and an eye for the foibles that make us human. A bit of every summer should be spent in Lake Wobegon.”
—The Christian Science Monitor
Praise for Garrison Keillor and his work
Wobegon Boy . . .
“A masterful portrait of the sort of small-town world that many of us Americans believe we grew up in, or would have liked to . . . A wonderfully readable tale.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“[Wobegon Boy is] expansive, big-hearted and can stand proudly alongside the most enduring American humor.”
—The Seattle Times
“Wobegon Boy had me spraying Diet Coke from my nostrils and scattering popcorn across the carpet in great gusts of mirth . . . As sharp and funny a comic novel as any I’ve read in the ’90s.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“This dark night of the happy Lutheran soul, spun out in Keillor’s clean, elegant prose, makes Wobegon Boy a midlife crisis well worth living.”
—Daily News
Lake Wobegon Days…
“A comic anatomy of what is small and ordinary and therefore potentially profound and universal in American life . . . Keillor’s great strength as a writer is to make the ordinary extraordinary.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Keillor’s laughs come dear, not cheap, emerging from shared virtue and good character, from reassuring us of our neighborliness and strength.... His true subject is how daily life is shot through with grace. Keillor writes a prose that can be turned to laughter, to tears . . . to compassion or satire, to a hundred effects. He is a brilliant parodist.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
Leaving Home . . .
“These monologues hold up as a string of lovely vignettes and memorable portraits . . . and slowly climb to peaks of quiet hilarity.”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Book of Guys ...
“Marvelous stuff from the funniest American writer still open for business.”
—Time
“Endearingly acerbic . . . In the most autobiographically revealing stories and the most wildly imaginative ones Keillor is at his subversive best.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Brilliant and imaginative . . . recommended for anyone who’s a guy, who knows a guy, or enjoys good writing and a laugh.”
—The Houston Post
“Keillor [gets] at the heart of guydom. . . . His splendid command of the lingo of modern pretension is fine stuff.”
—The New York Review of Books
“There aren’t too many guys I’m interested in reading on the subject of guys. But Garrison Keillor is one of them.... He unburdens himself beautifully, poignantly, on the sad, sorry plight of the modern American domesticated man.”
—The Philadelphia Enquirer