''Lake Wobegon Days'' is a novel by
Garrison Keillor
Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor (; born August 7, 1942) is an American author, singer, humorist, voice actor, and radio personality. He created the Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) show ''A Prairie Home Companion'' (called ''Garrison Keillor's Radio ...
, first published in
hardcover
A hardcover, hard cover, or hardback (also known as hardbound, and sometimes as case-bound) book is one bound with rigid protective covers (typically of binder's board or heavy paperboard covered with buckram or other cloth, heavy paper, or occa ...
by
Viking
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden),
who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...
in 1985. Based on material from his radio show ''
A Prairie Home Companion
''A Prairie Home Companion'' is a weekly radio variety show created and hosted by Garrison Keillor that aired live from 1974 to 2016. In 2016, musician Chris Thile took over as host, and the successor show was eventually renamed ''Live from He ...
'', the book brought Keillor's work to a much wider audience and achieved international success selling over 1 million copies. Like some of Keillor's other books, it is unusual in that it could be said that the
audiobook
An audiobook (or a talking book) is a recording of a book or other work being read out loud. A reading of the complete text is described as "unabridged", while readings of shorter versions are abridgements.
Spoken audio has been available in sc ...
preceded the publication in written form.
The work is a humorous account of life in fictitious
Lake Wobegon
Lake Wobegon is a fictional town created by Garrison Keillor as the setting of the recurring segment "News from Lake Wobegon" for the radio program ''A Prairie Home Companion'' broadcast from St Paul, Minnesota. The fictional town serves as the s ...
,
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
, a
heartland
Heartland or Heartlands may refer to:
Businesses and organisations
* Heartland Bank, a New Zealand-based financial institution
* Heartland Inn, a chain of hotels based in Iowa, United States
* Heartland Alliance, an anti-poverty organization i ...
small town. Its early chapters are written in the form and style of a history of the town and later ones chronicle the lives, concerns, and activities of its inhabitants, with inter-generational tensions and relationships forming a major theme. Most of the latter material was originally delivered on radio in the form of monologues. Due to the nature of the original material, the second half of the novel has many recurring characters but little in the way of plot, resembling an incompletely integrated group of short stories.
Reception
In his
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
review
Richard Eder
Richard Gray Eder (August 16, 1932 – November 21, 2014) was an American film reviewer and a drama critic.
Life and career
For 20 years, he was variously a foreign correspondent, a film reviewer and the drama critic for ''The New York Times''. ...
describes the book as being "filled with good things, but it has its problems." Eder goes on to say that "It is a pastiche, and a very talented one; but there are times when the whimsy frays." Barth Healey however, describes it as "a genuine work of American history" in his
New York Times Book Review
''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
.
References
Further reading
Book reviews
*
*
*
External links
Garrison Keillor discusses ''Lake Wobegon Days''on the BBC ''
World Book Club
''World Book Club'' is a radio programme on the BBC World Service. Each edition of the programme, which is broadcast on the first Saturday of the month with repeats into the following Monday, features a famous author discussing one of his or her ...
''
1985 American novels
Ambassador Book Award-winning works
American comedy novels
Novels by Garrison Keillor
Novels set in Minnesota
Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album
Viking Press books
Virgin Records albums
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