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Summary: Nerdy, horny teenager turns into writer
Review: "I look like a tree toad who was changed into a boy but not completely."Meet Gary. He's a geeky fourteen-year-old with self-esteem problems and an alarming crush on his cousin, Kate. Within the course of the book he discovers he has a love of writing. His first stories have talking dogs, incurable diseases and unpleasant weather phenomena, but as he grows up a little and gains some insight into his family, his friends, and himself, he realizes that there's more to write about. At the heart of it, the book is a pretty typical coming of age story, but it's worth reading if you're a Keillor fan and love his kind of humor (though his jokes and descriptions are more explicit here than they usually are). For me there weren't a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, but I was smiling often and enjoying Keillor's unusual descriptions ("her big yellow butt like two pigs fighting in a laundry bag"). If you're a writer, or just interested in the writing process, you might also like the book because it will give you some wry insights into a writer's mind and also show you some of the development of a novice's work. Plus, there are also some truly touching moments that leap out at you unexpectedly. So if you want a quick, entertaining read that will surprise you sometimes (with funniness or poignancy) read Lake Wobegon Summer 1956.
Rating: 
Summary: AMUSING BUT RATHER BORING
Review: "Lake Wobegon:Summer 1956" did contain a share of laughs and amusing moments, but overall, the book failed to hold my interest. It cound best be described as "Woe, be gone!" The book is filled with sexual fantasies and dreams of exuberant youth, but the adolescent fantasies soon became tiring and mundane. The reader keeps hoping a plot of more substance will unfold but, alas, it does not. The scenario almost seems like an attempt to reproduce the theme of a terrific older book, "Summer of 42", but Keillor's book lacks the strong setting, characters, intrigue, and raw, sentimental emotion found in "Summer of 42". "Summer 1956" makes for a quick, light-hearted read, but it is probably not a book that will stand the test of time. Read it, if you will, but do not expect to find anything memorable among the pages.
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Summary: A Simpler Time, A Simpler Life
Review: A different sort of work from Keillor, as told from the adolescent male point of view. Bearing that in mind, we do lose some of the adult viewpoint of the Lake Wobegone that we know and love, but Keillor more than makes up for it in the angst that young Gary endures throughout this very well-spun story of small town life in the fifties. Yes, there is some gross-out humor, and a great deal of sexual boy-stuff, but heck, this is a story from the perspective of a teenage boy! I enjoyed this book tremendously, and found it to be a humorous yet poignant reminder of times past, when life was simpler, our troubles were fixable, and our families were no further away than the front porch.
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Summary: A 14-year-old fundamentalist learns about sex...
Review: A very enjoyable book. Coming from a fundamentalist background myself, I see a lot of truth in Keillor's writings concerning the "Sanctified Brethren". It is with this as his background in which young Gary grows up and learns to write about such things as fatal blood diseases, talking dogs, and watchful dead grandpas. There are a few quibbles I have with this book, such as an overdoing of the soft-core fantasies of the young author (once or twice to get his mindset, sure, but at least 8-10 different scenes of sexual fantasy? Too much), a worthless two-page chapter 15 in which young Gary finds his his old stomping ground isn't the way it used to be, and finally never really developing the character of Roger Guppy except in his relationship with each of the other characters; for such a central character, it would have been nice to know him more. Overall, however, there are a number of times I laughed out loud at the word pictures Keillor gives us. He writes well as a 14-year-old. Nothing will ever take the place of his true masterpiece, "Lake Wobegon Days", but this is still a very entertaining read.
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Summary: A 14-year-old fundamentalist learns about sex...
Review: A very enjoyable book. Coming from a fundamentalist background myself, I see a lot of truth in Keillor's writings concerning the "Sanctified Brethren". It is with this as his background in which young Gary grows up and learns to write about such things as fatal blood diseases, talking dogs, and watchful dead grandpas. There are a few quibbles I have with this book, such as an overdoing of the soft-core fantasies of the young author (once or twice to get his mindset, sure, but at least 8-10 different scenes of sexual fantasy? Too much), a worthless two-page chapter 15 in which young Gary finds his his old stomping ground isn't the way it used to be, and finally never really developing the character of Roger Guppy except in his relationship with each of the other characters; for such a central character, it would have been nice to know him more. Overall, however, there are a number of times I laughed out loud at the word pictures Keillor gives us. He writes well as a 14-year-old. Nothing will ever take the place of his true masterpiece, "Lake Wobegon Days", but this is still a very entertaining read.
Rating: 
Summary: Wickedly Funny!
Review: Admittedly, this is a new "take" on the Lake Wobegon a lot of us have come to know and love. It is bawdy, in a pubescent sort of way. It is also filled with hilarious moments, the kind that had me combusting into chuckles at almost every page. I have truly not laughed this hard from a book in a while! The story is predictably sentimental, but that is why I read Keillor. It is subtly filled, however, with plenty of commentary on religion and the human condition. To me, this is his best offering since "Lake Wobegon Days."
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Summary: If This Is A Novel Then Where's The Story?
Review: Apparently Keillor has been writing so long that he thinks a bunch of bathroom humor and the crude sexual thoughts of a 14-year-old boy can hold our interest for almost 300 pages just because it has his name on the cover. Perhaps there was a deadline to meet or Keillor needed the advance for his sex therapy. The book is obviously autobiographical since the main main character is named Gary, a wannabe writer growing up in Minnesota. It's too bad, since Keillor at his best is capable of clever, intellectual and thoughtful work that can keep a fan spellbound. If this is Lake Wobegon then where are all the characters and situations that readers and radio listeners have come to love or at least cherish for all their familiar foibles? Or maybe like a lot of formerly brilliant writers, he's now a runaway train in need of a good editor.
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Summary: Not Keillor's Best
Review: As a fan of Garrison Keillor, I was mildly disappointed in his latest effort. As I read I kept wondering what happened to the Lake Wobegon I have come to know and love. This feels like a different place, and perhaps that is the point, as I suppose places are indeed different when examined from the perspective of a 14 year old boy. Did I laugh?... yes, but I grew tired of the bathroom humor and endless adolescent facination with all things sexual. I must agree with many of the other reviewers that this book is in need of a more thorough editing. I hope in his next effort Keillor returns us to the Lake Wobegon I was longing for.
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Summary: Whatever happened to continuity?
Review: As a longtime book reviewer at a midwestern newspaper I have read (and reviewed) much of Keillor's work. It's wise for Keillor to write about Lake Wobegon a.k.a. small town America with all the requisite quirkiness, nostalgia, etc. That's what his audience wants and expects. However, he should also be respectful of this promise. Suddenly LW is populated with husbands who constantly cheat on their wives and girlfriends, and his charming and lyrical pages have become filled with unnecessary pornography. I imagine Keillor's work floats through a publishing house relatively untouched, and that's fine as far as his wonderful prose goes, but a brave editor should have helped him sharpen the storyline to offer more reader satisfaction and to maintain LW continuity. Despite landing on the bestseller list, this book received mostly bad reviews ("USA TODAY," "The New York Times") and I believe these two things would have saved it.
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Summary: Read his other books
Review: As usual, Garrison Keillor is a good storyteller. But all his years on the radio must have caused a lot of vulgar, adolescent humor to get bottled up inside, since he can't say it on the air. And he finally found an outlet for it, he put it all in this book. So if you're a fan of "A Prairie Home Companion," and don't mind the crude humor, this book might be for you. Otherwise, his other Lake Wobegon books are much better.
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