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    Pontoon
    Pontoon
    Pontoon
    Audiobook8 hours

    Pontoon

    Written by Garrison Keillor

    Narrated by Garrison Keillor

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    It#8217;s Lake Wobegon as you#8217;ve imagined it: a tightly knit community that sometimes draws you home and sometimes gives you wings to fly away.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateSep 11, 2007
    ISBN9781598875270
    Pontoon
    Author

    Garrison Keillor

    Garrison Keillor, born in Anoka, Minnesota, in 1942, is an essayist, columnist, blogger, and writer of sonnets, songs, and limericks, whose novel Pontoon the New York Times said was “a tough-minded book . . . full of wistfulness and futility yet somehow spangled with hope”—no easy matter, especially the spangling. Garrison Keillor wrote and hosted the radio show A Prairie Home Companion for more than forty years, all thanks to kind aunts and good teachers and a very high threshold of boredom. In his retirement, he’s written a memoir and a novel. He and his wife, Jenny Lind Nilsson, live in Minneapolis and New York.

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    Reviews for Pontoon

    3.5/5

    185 ratings16 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Not as good as Keillor's Lake Woebegone radio shows
    • 4/5
      My favorite of Garrison Keillor's books that I have read so far. Pontoon quietly and thoughtfully builds up to a farcical climax that was inevitable from the moment the cover blurb stated "This is the story about the Lutheran ministers on the pontoon boat." It's impressive how well it manages both.
    • 4/5
      An older woman passes away in the town which becomes the vehicle for Keillor to explore death, lost opportunities, love and marriage. Some humorous insights along the way.
    • 4/5
      Pontoon begins with the death of an elderly woman living in Lake Wobegon. It ends with the woman's memorial service, and in between the reader catches a glimpse of various happenings in the town, many of them centering around her daughter & her coping mechanisms following her mother's death.I think the jury is still out regarding my feelings for Garrison Keillor's writing. This is my second read of his, both having been on audio. While for the most part I enjoy the way he can expand on seemingly normal little snapshots of people's lives, his voice can also at times drone on and on & almost put the reader to sleep. The details are nice, but sometimes I think he tends to go too far off track & then I find my mind wandering. But then just when that begins to happen, he will say something so funny, in such a deadpan voice, that I laugh out loud. Lots of references to the Lutherans in this one, which I can relate to, being one myself. Overall, I tend to enjoy his writing, but I think maybe short stories as opposed to novels might be the way to go -- for me, at least.
    • 4/5
      I started this book as we drove home from a post-retirement trip to Louisiana knowing that we would be going through Minnesota at some point. Little did I realize how appropriate my choice of reading material was. Shortly after we headed west from Minneapolis I saw a sign for Lake Wobegon Trail and I realized that we were driving right through the area that Keillor writes about.I've heard Keillor a few times and so I could imagine his voice as I read this book. His counterpart in Canada, Stuart McLean, has the same sort of style. Both of them are probably better listened to than read but once you have heard them enough times you can transplant their laconic delivery to the written page.The book starts with the death of Evelyn in Lake Wobegon which occurred just as she had wished, suddenly in her bed after an evening of good food and laughs with good friends. Her death affects many other people in Lake Wobegon but perhaps no-one as much as her daughter Barbara who discovered her body. Barbara has been drinking too much and letting her house go but with the death of her mother she has an epiphany. She learns her mother had a lover that she would go away on trips with but she never let anyone know. The lover, Raoul, was her boyfriend in 1941 but then he was called away to service and she married someone else. They reconnected when they were in their 60s and had a wonderful time together. Barbara decides that she will learn from this to enjoy her life but do it openly.The end of the book is given over to Evelyn's memorial service which is as outlandish as you can imagine and then some. It takes place on the lake and involves pontoon boats, parasails, hot air balloons, odiferous dogs etc. It's worth reading the book just to get to that chapter.
    • 2/5
      Like the radio program better.
    • 4/5
      I am already a big Garrison Keillor fan, so I've been looking forward to reading this book. My high expectations were not disappointed - this was wonderful. Not necessarily high literature, as a previous reviewer has noted, but still charming and witty. I could hear Keillor's voice in my head, reading aloud to me. This would be a fantastic book to listen to on a road trip. Preferably heading northwest.
    • 3/5
      Over the years, I have only listened to Prairie Home Companion with half an ear, and I assumed it was a gentle bit of sweet down-home humor. If this book is any indication, I've been missing a lot of wickedly funny stuff, although I'm guessing that the radio show can't be quite as bawdy as this book sometimes is. In this book, a middle-aged alcoholic woman discovers that her late mother Evelyn led a racy secret life with a lover named Raoul. Even more shocking in Lake Wobegon, she was no longer an observant Lutheran, and her last wishes were for unusual funeral involving a bowling ball. Throw in pet aromatherapist from (of course) California, an Elvis impersonator, a hot air balloon and a couple of huge fiberglass ducks, and you have a laugh-out-loud entertainment with just a touch of redeeming social value.
    • 4/5
      My favorite of Garrison Keillor's books that I have read so far. Pontoon quietly and thoughtfully builds up to a farcical climax that was inevitable from the moment the cover blurb stated "This is the story about the Lutheran ministers on the pontoon boat." It's impressive how well it manages both.
    • 1/5
      Not very good or interesting. I liked the radio show as well until I read this book and now I can't bear to listen to it anymore. Keiler seems to be obsessed with sex in this book, which kind of destroys the world of Lake Wobigon he paints in the stories on his radio show. A couple of funny jokes or a little innuendo would be fine, but I couldn't even read more than half of this book before getting disgusted with it.
    • 4/5
      Another pretty good Garrison Keillor novel about the good folk of Lake Wobegon. Keillor seems to have arrived at a favorite formula: Delve a bit into the lives and hidden dreams of some of the Lake Wobegon denizens, maybe have one of them act on a long-buried dream and dredge up all manner of old submerged hurts and pettinesses, wind up with a major town activity gone slapsticky awry (in this case, a burial at Lake Wobegon of cremation ashes stowed inside a bowling ball from aloft by a parasailer. I think three or four of Keillor's books have followed this pattern. But never mind, it's a nice pattern that I enjoy now and again.
    • 4/5
      I listened to this book (Keillor read) instead of reading. I highly advise others to do so also, since a lot of his humor and inflections don't transfer well to the printed page. I was a little taken back at some of the graphic sex and language through the story, but understood the need for a lot of it.The story begins with Evelyn's death. Her daughter finds her and there starts the unraveling of Evelyn's life and secrets along with those of her family. The novel also has a small side story following Debbie and her family, but the real story revolves around Evelyn and her daughter Barbara. Keillor's sense of humor is quite different, but if you have listened to and enjoyed Prairie Home Companion, then I am sure you will enjoy this book.
    • 4/5
      Certainly the best book I've read by Keillor. Baudier, funnier. He does tend to stick to some ideas a tad too long like the pastors on the pontoon boat seems to have been repeated at least once or twice in other media by Keillor. Love his stories and his story-telling in general. Very entertaining and as a Lutheran, always something I can identify with.
    • 2/5
      Hmmm. I think Keillor's schtick is getting old. Either that or he's writing too much and the quality control suffers. Maybe he has bills to pay. Whatever, this was a most disappointing book. Keillor's schtick, for those who don't know, is to chronicle the doings of people in a dull hick town in Minnesota, wringing comedy from their very ordinary lives with sharp observation and dry wit. Remove the laughs, as in this book, and what you have is a litany of rather depressing life stories, each one a born loser. After about three of these, and only half a laugh in the lot, I got the feeling that this was not one of Mr. Keillor's best. Worse was yet to come, because, as was apparent almost from the start, he had in store for us a Grand Finale of unlikely farce. There are two problems with this; 1) farce is rarely very funny, and this one was no exception, and 2) unlikely farce sits very badly in Lake Wobegon, a town where nothing exciting or unusual ever happens. That's the whole Wobegon joke, and if you undermine that whole Wobegonian ethos for the sake of some cheap gags, what's left?Verdict: two Norwegian bachelor farmers out of ten.
    • 5/5
      laugh out loud funny, especially if you're a lutheran. Keillor does the reading on the cd and this is my second listening and I still laughed. wonderful
    • 4/5
      It's that middle bit of "A Prairie Home Companion" where Keillor talks about Lutherans, but drawn out to book length. It's good, it's funny, it is heartwarming and full of little nuggets of wisdom. The characters are sad and uplifting at the same time. A pretty little American tale.