Lake Wobegon Days

978-0-670-80514-3OCLC11971882Followed byLeaving Home: a Collection of Lake Wobegon Stories 

Lake Wobegon Days^[1] is a novel by Garrison Keillor, first published in hardcover by Viking in 1985. Based on material from his radio show A Prairie Home Companion, the book brought Keillor's work to a much wider audience and achieved international success selling over 1 million copies.^[2] Like some of Keillor's other books, it is unusual in that it could be said that the audiobook preceded the publication in written form.

The work is a humorous account of life in fictitious Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, a heartland 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 review Richard Eder 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."^[3] Barth Healey however, describes it as "a genuine work of American history" in his New York Times Book Review.^[4]

References

Further reading

Book reviews

• Healey, Barth (October 25, 1985). "Idylls of Minnesota". New York Times Book Review. Retrieved 2020-02-14.
• "Lake Wobegone Days". Kirkus Reviews. August 15, 1985. Retrieved 2020-02-14.
• Eder, Richard (1985-09-08). "LAKE WOBEGON DAYS by Garrison Keillor". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2020-02-14.

External links

• Garrison Keillor discusses Lake Wobegon Days on the BBC World Book Club