Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keillor Reviewed by Steve Rudd

I have a responsible job and pay my taxes and keep my lawn mowed, but because I dare to be an individual, people whisper about me behind my back. Why is life like this? This epic novel is an absolute masterpiece that is drama-driven and hugely poignant, as it follows a man called John Tollefson as he bumbles through his life over a pronounced period of time, with the novel beginning in the American Midwest before re-locating to New York City when the character feels drawn to the metropolis for a variety of reasons.

The grand, Legends Of The Fall-fetched scope is breathtaking, with much of the drama transpiring in the face of the death of John's father, the novel intimately focusing on how he deals with the grief while trying to get his own life back on track after such an immense loss. If you don't show the people you love that you love them, then what's the point? As with most novels that deal directly - and unflinchingly - with the issue of mortality, there is a chance that the story might seem a little depressing to some people, but ultimately this is a novel that is somehow a life-enhancing experience because Garrison Keillor is such a skilful writer when it comes to encountering raw human emotions.

Almost every sentence is poised with a profound sense of graceful poetry, and those readers who have experienced the close death of a loved one will surely find a great deal of comfort and consolation as a result of reading this. The drama might be slow-moving and uneventful (save for the aforementioned death in the family), but from start to finish Wobegon Boy is fantastically thought-provoking and fuelled by humility, modesty and good old fashioned tenderness. Time is a timeless concept that has led mankind badly astray, especially as we record age, which we do from the time of birth, and yet it is not elapsed time that really concerns us, but time remaining, and that is something that we cannot know.

And so we should not concern ourselves with time, except as we must arrange meetings or journeys by public conveyance. Above all else, this is a bold novel that teaches you to cherish your family and friends - and to take nothing at all for granted - as though the author's life depended on conveying such important matters of fact. My best advice, then, is to read and respond... Mistakes make better artists of all of us as we weave new patterns in the fabric of our lives - and you better believe it. ISBN:0-571-19351-X (Faber, first published in 1997)

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	As the novel title must suggest, this is a crime thriller... and one of the highest order. I first heard of the author in Pelecanos through him heaping praise on the 'action-thriller' writing of Steve Hamilton. Like with Hamilton's work, Pelecanos weaves an engrossing story around a series of hugely believable and genuinely exciting set-pieces. Interestingly, many authors Read more...

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	You can get something out of a book, even a bad book. First published in France in 1934, this extraordinary piece of writing never saw the light of day in the United States and the wider world at large until after 1961, following a mighty legal battle that resulted in the book finally being published elsewhere. Human beings make a strange fauna and flora...More than anything Read more...

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	Bret's work, it seems, is either loved or truly loathed. Almost all of his past novels have been as controversial and as feared by some people as hell itself, especially as Bret focuses on taboo subjects with intense abandon. His best known book is the huge-selling American Psycho masterpiece, yet his other work is most definitely worth reading too - if you like that kind of thing. Alright, Less Than Zero isn't half Read more...

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	We only live once. I don't think we ever really confront that until it's too late. Understandably shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Lost Souls is not your average mystery-thriller novel, with this engrossing 'whodunnit' focusing on a small-town cop trying to get to the bottom of the mysterious death of a three-year-old girl. The prime suspect is the local football star, Read more...

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