Saving Grandma : A Novel (Calvin Becker Trilogy)

Rating:
Summary: A Sweet Comming Of Age Story Set In The Alps
Review: I started reading Schaeffer with his funny and touching Portofino. I was sure he could not top that book. He did! Saving Grandma is the best thing since Huck Fin, no kidding Andre Dubus (House of Sand and Fog) calls Shaeffer "The new American Twain" and he is not exagerating. Saving Grandma cuts to the heart of what it meansd to grow up. It is also the best book I've ever read about growing up ion a religious houshold. Maybe this is the perfect novel about being young! My book club rated this book as the favorite of the year.

Rating:
Summary: Real sex versus phony sex
Review: If the story is somewhat autobiographical it helps explain why Edith Schaeffer's (Frank's mother's) version of how L'Abri was started, an account which I read many years ago, is much more spiritual and has so many more answered prayers than any of my efforts have ever had. The L'Abri book made me feel that my own church experiences were deeply lacking, and that somewhere out there was an amazing version of church and evangelism. Frank's novel debunks that myth. I am saddened to have that myth debunked, while at the same time relieved. I am angry at evangelicalism's weakness for exaggerating and puffing the resume. It only ends up discouraging people who want to serve God.

At first I was turned off by the constant preoccupation with sex in the book, but then I remembered how I was as a teenager--constantly preoccupied with sex. I ended up being deeply thankful for the way the book portrayed teenage sexuality-an idealized, faithful and profoundly God-created sexuality, in contrast to the painfully phony sexuality of fundamentalism, and in contrast to the dehumanized sexuality of our society.

I did not find the book humorous, I certainly did not laugh out loud as I was supposed to according to the reviews. I grew up in a missionary family and the scenes were all too familiar. I found the story poignant.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect follow up to Portofino
Review: If you've read Portofino, you've just got to read Saving Grandma! But whatever you do, don't read Saving Grandma UNTIL you've read Portofino! Saving Grandma is the the followup to Portofino, so you'll want to know the history. I don't want to give it all away, but I'll say you're in for some seriously funny, crazy, off the wall antics when you read these books! I'll also say, I wish I knew Calvin. He seems like my kind of person! Still wondering if the movie for Portofino is ever going to be released.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Sequel to "Portofino"
Review: It's even more trouble for the Becker missionary family when the unsaved, uncouth, and unpleasant mother of Ralph Becker moves in to their Switzerland chalet. Young Calvin, now fifteen years old and full of adolescent longing for his girlfriend Jennifer, must put up not only with the thoroughly distasteful antics of his grandmother, but also endure the nasty aftershocks of a church split and watch his father grow more and more unhinged. Though Grandma is unpleasant, over time, he begins to see how perhaps they had more in common than he had thought, which spurs him to think about whether he really belongs in his increasingly loony family at all.

This novel, the sequel to Portofino, takes place two years after the events in that book. It is a longer and less humorous novel than the first, and is also a bit less focused as a result. Schaeffer's best passages, as in the first book, deal with the excesses of the evangelical subculture and in the lovely portraits of the Italian coast, which is largely filtered through Calvin's sex-driven fantasies in this novel. Most of the humor this time comes from aspects that will make evangelicals raise their eyebrows: Grandma's profuse swearing, the lampoons of fundamentalist seperatism, and sex, lots of it, sometimes quite explicit (par for the course for a mainstream literary novel--but really hot for an evangelical novel). Much of the pathos of the book, for this reader, comes from Calvin's intense longing to be with his true love and his alienation from the subculture that his family inhabits and embodies. The combination of the two is still a potent mix, and it is set inside a rollicking, fast-paced narrative that made the book a genuine page-turner from start to finish. Some of the situations seemed a tad exaggerated to be believable (such as the church split situation), but the novel's other strengths readily overcame the brief suspension of belief. I can readily recommend the book in conjunction with Portofino.

Rating:
Summary: Another smashing book by Frank Schaeffer! Bravo, Bravo!!!
Review: One of my favorite books of all time is Portofino. I read it in 1993, shortly after the book came out, and it is a book that I could read time and time again, so likeable is Calvin Becker, so alive the sights and smells of Portofino, and so funny and bittersweet it's insights.

So it was with great anticipation that I read "Saving Grandma", Schaeffer's sequel to Portofino, picking up roughly where the other left off.

I was not at all disappointed. While the book fills you with a little more angst, as you suffer along with Calvin waiting to see how it all turns out, the book is as sweet, as funny, as colorful as Portofino. This book proves that you don't have to write a thriller to write a page turner, I devoured the last 150 pages in one sitting where I got up only to go to the bathroom, and took the book along with me, reading as I walked.

If you liked Portofino, you'll love Saving Grandma. I suggest reading Portofino first, as the two are very much intertwined.

Does anyone know if a follow up book is planned? the ending seemed to suggest it.

Rating:
Summary: How much of Saving Grandma is fiction?
Review: Saving Grandma is a fascinating book. I read it practically in one sitting. Besides the fact that the book is fast-paced and humorous a la Adrian Mole, it intrigued me because I happen to know that the author is himself the son of Calvinist missionaries who established an institute similar to L'Arche in the same region of Switzerland that the book is set in. I do not know all the details of Frank Schaeffer's life as a young man, but I do know that some of the incidents in the book bear a remarkable resemblance to real-life events. After having participated directly in his parents' enterprise, Frank Schaeffer has rejected their Calvinism and converted to Greek Orthodoxy.Can we expect to see a third novel (Portofino was the first, and I can't wait to read it!) in this series in which young Calvin grows up and adopts the Greek Orthodox faith or something very much like it? I certainly hope so, for I am very fond of Calvin Becker, and I congratulate Frank Schaeffer for the progress he has made in his spiritual life. Nothing deadens the human soul like the Calvinist doctrine of predestination.

Rating:
Summary: A mean-spirited, juvenile waste of talent!
Review: Shaeffer's poke at Protestant evangelism is a clever enough theme, and the book starts off quite well. It's fun being introduced to foul-mouthed Grandma, her overbearing missionary son, and her God-fearing daughter-in-law who was for me the most real-to-life character in the book. The initial exploits of Grandma's grandson, the book's hero, with his spastic friend and English girlfriend were original and often humerous (with a little adolescent sex thrown in for the sake of sinful reality).

But then Shaeffer started to repeat his themes over and over to the point of boredom. The end of the novel was weak, not tied into the bulk of the book. I was glad to get to the end. I thought Shaeffer had good ideas for this book but threw them together poorly, almost as if he wanted to be done with it as quickly as possible, thus destroying what could have been a very good novel.