Liberty - Comment and Review

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Product Description

A national holiday in Lake Wobegon is always gaudy and joyful. But what is going on between Clint Bunsen and Miss Liberty?Clint Bunsen is one of the old reliables in Lake Wobegon -- the treasurer of the Lutheran church and the auto mechanic who starts your car on below-zero mornings. For six years he has run the Fourth of July parade, turning what was once a line of pickup trucks and girls pushing baby carriages that hold their cats into an event of dazzling spectacle. Blazing bands, marching units, cannons, horses, a fireworks show, and the famous Living Flag -- one thousand men and women wearing red, white, or blue, standing in formation -- have attracted the attention of CNN and prompted the governor to put in an appearance as well. The town is dizzy with anticipation. Until, that is, they hear of Clint's ambition to run for Congress. They're embarrassed for him. They know him too well -- his unfortunate episodes involving vodka sours, his rocky marriage. And then there is his friendship, or whatever it is, with the twenty-four-year-old girl who dresses up as the Statue of Liberty for the parade. It's rumored that underneath those robes she is buck naked, and that her torch contains a quart of booze.It's Lake Wobegon as it's always been -- good loving people who drive each other crazy.

Customer Reviews:

All Encompassing

I have not yet finished the book. I am listening to the audiobook version, which is brilliant since Keillor is a master story teller.

From reading the other reviews, it seems to me like some reviewers either didn't finish the book or missed major themes.

Isn't the character of lady liberty a metaphor in this story? She comes traipsing into the town, Clint's life, the parade and offends, shocks, and seduces the hell out of Lake Wobegon.

It's a social commentary on the state of America at this time when "Patriotism" is pitted against "Liberty". I love how he can even emphatically call the president "an idiot" since ostensibly he's talking about the President of the United States in the story.

Also some of the more graphic passages (sex and violence) are brilliant for their use of language and metaphor to describe powerful events, whether tragic or beautiful, that touch each and every one of us.

I intend to write a more complete review upon finishing the book, and I highly recommend the audio version.
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Liberty Reader

I live in Lake Wobegon territory and could identify any of the characters as someone I know. I'm a die-hard Public Radio listener and appreciate the writing style, expressing the local languange and attitudes. These are people from my generation, and I enjoyed my brief winter vacation by escaping with them in this book, stuffed in my reading chair. ...more info

Vintage Keillor

Reviewers here are so critical!

Yes, this is a little darker than Pontoon, but with a real gift of character development and K's signature manner of juxtaposing being good with being happy. The denoument is beautiful and heart-warming.

Garrison Keillor is a national treasure. ...more info

Read LIBERTY and you'll never think of the Fourth of July in quite the same way again

Is Clint Bunsen suffering a midlife crisis? He is convinced by a faulty DNA lab report that he is part slightly over half Hispanic, which differs strongly from what his family has always believed: that they are absolutely, positively 100% Norwegian. He attempts to shed his sturdy, Midwestern persona by thinking in Spanish and ordering some rather flamboyant clothing to wear on July 4th.

Clint's wife of many years is getting on his nerves, and he has met a hottie: a twenty-something woman named Angelica, who really rings his chimes. She teaches yoga, is a topless dancer and a part-time mystic, and Clint feels that he has just won the lottery when he's alone with her. He's even toying with the idea of accompanying her to California. His children are grown and gone, so he doesn't feel it's necessary to stick around. He's tired of working his fingers to the bone as a mechanic in the family business, the local Ford garage, which isn't doing all that well anyway. And he's being shoved aside by the Parade Committee, which is unfortunate, considering all his hard work in attempting to give the sleepy little community a spectacular celebration year after year. This will be his last year as Chairman of the Fourth of July parade, and he intends to pull out all the stops.

Clint has spared no expense when it comes to celebrating the Fourth. Didn't he put the town on the map last year with the parade? He even got CNN to cover a few minutes of it on national television, even though Lake Wobegon itself never got mentioned on air. And this year's parade and celebration will be phenomenal, or at least his version of phenomenal.

He even managed to secure Homeland Security Funds that he used to purchase aerial diversion devices (some pretty awesome fireworks, though they couldn't really be called fireworks). He stepped on some folks' toes when he said there would be no pickup trucks in the parade and no tractors except for antique ones. He cancelled Cowpie Bingo and didn't want the Sons of Knute to march because they were too pokey. Local folks in costume would represent George and Martha Washington, Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Uncle Sam would be on stilts. A handbell choir, a precision pitchfork drill team and a couple representing American Gothic painted by Grant Wood would also march. There would be four teams of 16 Percherons pulling circus wagons. The Living Flag, the mayor, the governor and Miss Liberty would all participate.

When the Fourth arrives, the community is filled with excitement --- if residents of Lake Wobegon can actually get excited about anything. There's some tension in the air, too, because Angelica has arrived in town with her new boyfriend, Clint's wife is toting a gun, the governor isn't on time, and all manner of other problems keep popping up. Even CNN is running late.

The parade begins. Circus wagons, drum-and-bugle corps, a 4-H float, the Soybean Queen, 20 dancers from the Tammy Jo Dance Studio Happiness Troupe, Leaping Lutherans Parachute Team, 10 Minutemen, a unicycle basketball team, a 40-member handbell choir, and all the rest. Miss Liberty, Angelica, is wearing only a robe and sandals. Imagine a parade gone somewhat askew, to say the very least. Read LIBERTY and you'll never think of the Fourth of July in quite the same way again.

--- Reviewed by Carole Turner...more info

Liberty

Typical Garrison Keillor offering. Excellent character development, irony, humor, folksy wisdom, everything you've come to expect from the Lake Wobegone collection. Great read. Enjoy....more info

Didn't do much for me...

While I really enjoyed Pontoon, this book lacked Pontoon's hilarity and just didn't do much for me. I felt kind of depressed when I'd finished it. To me, the book's humor seems slanted towards men, particularily men undergoing mid-life crisises??? Maybe it's just me...

Are there any women out there who enjoyed this book? I'm curious as to what you thought....more info

Funny, But Darker Story from Keillor

Finished Garrison Keillor's Liberty. If you like Lake Wobegon Days and its many sequels, or if you're a fan of Keillor's radio show A Prairie Home Companion, you'll probably like Liberty. It's a story that centers around Lake Wobegon's humorous attempts to put together a major Fourth of July celebration. The story revolves around the chair, Clint Bunsen, who's also going through some aging issues.

It's funny and very readable, which is par for the course for Keillor. Liberty is a little different from other offerings, in my opinion, due to the way he handles the issues of aging, regret, and what our lives mean. It almost has an elegiac feeling at times.

One drawback to the book: Keillor tends to repeat himself; perhaps it's due to his skills as an oral storyteller.

Liberty is a good read if you like Keillor, or just like humorous stories about small-town America.

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Another Great One From The Master

Another great installment in a long list of great fiction from Mr. Keillor. If you liked previous ones, you will love this one. I think its even funnier (albeit at the expense of more adult humor) than previous ones. ...more info

Keillor Embraces the Dark Side

Garrison Keillor must hate his Lake Wobegon almost as much as he loves it. Though Keillor is not known for Village Virus writing like his Midwestern predecessors Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson, in _Liberty_ Keillor has embraced the dark side of his charming and quirky small town, for here his characters are not simply odd: they are deranged, depressed, and even bitter at times. Rather than being repulsed by this darkness, however, readers should be ready to embrace it. In the novel, the plight of Clint Bunsen is surprisingly compelling and fresh despite its mid-life-crisis conventions. A man thoroughly tired of the unforgiving dullness of his work, whose wife expresses more passion for her tomatoes than for him, who finds he may be of Spanish, not Norwegian, descent, Clint longs for, of course, Liberty. And when freedom presents itself in the form of a young and beautiful yoga instructor/topless dancer/fortune teller who wants to whisk him off to the California he has always longed for, you root for Clint to dump the whole rotten town and start anew. All of this deranged anger Keillor delivers with aplomb and charm, and fans of the Lake Wobegon series will not be disappointed. ...more info

A Bit Disappointing

I thoroughly enjoyed Pontoon and was looking forward to Liberty. However, the often-hilarious descriptions of the folks of Lake Wobegone are undermined by the preposterous relationship that develops between Clint Bunson and Ms. Pflame. Garrison may like to imagine that an attractive 28-year-old woman would be interested in sex with a stout 60-year-old mechanic, but it is a thousand miles from reality....more info

The shallow pursuit of Ms. Liberty...

Garrison Keillor's Liberty follows Clint Bunsen's midlife crisis: at 60, he feels that his dull life in Lake Wobegon was a waste, has an affair with a woman half his age, and contemplates a) running away to California or b) running for Congress. As the chairman of the annual Fourth of July parade, he is obsessed with creating monumental parades that attract CNN coverage and celebrities, but the townsfolk resent his meddling and long to return to simpler festivities. Complicating the matter is the fact that Clint is having a fling with last year's Miss Liberty.

Like Keillor's other Lake Wobegon novels, Liberty is populated by a quirky supporting cast of grumpy farmers, very gloomy people of Norwegian / German descent, and crazy locals known for their wild and unpredictable behavior, but these are so removed from the narration that they are eclipsed by Clint, who isn't a strong enough narrator to carry the novel. We hear briefly from Clint's long-suffering wife Irene, from a crazy gun-toting conspiracy theory bachelor, and from several politicians, but Clint is the main source of the observations regarding Lake Wobegon and its annual parade.

The actual action is slight and occurs towards the end; the rest of the story is devoted to Clint's midlife crisis as he contemplates how his life could have turned out differently if he'd stayed in California after the Navy. Guilted into returning home, Clint has been the main mechanic at Bunsen Motors for many years, and now his brother is retiring and wants him to buy the business. Clint has always resented being a mechanic, and wants to escape. His children are grown up and living on their own, and he's never had a deep relationship with his wife of over three decades. Clint receives DNA results that he isn't in fact 100% Norwegian. As part of this crisis, Clint reimagines himself as a passionate Latin lover through poetry, so his poems and narrations are increasingly sprinkled with basic Spanish. His newfound heritage increases his sense of isolation and resentment at Lake Wobegon, more so as he has been made to resign by the committee. Along the way, Keillor makes several pointed political statements, including an incident that's an obvious nod to Larry Craig's arrest in an airport bathroom for solicitation.

Liberty was simply a so-so read due to the lack of secondary characters and the fact that a large portion of the novel is narration via Clint's thoughts instead of action. His midlife crisis was handled tenderly, but Clint's personality made it hard to root for him. This wasn't one of my favorite Keillor Lake Wobegon novels, but it's a nice read on a rainy day. ...more info

Highly Entertaining Romp of a Book

Peel back the layers of Lake Wobegon and you'll see the "real" Lake Wobegon. Gone is the veneer of innocence detailed in earlier books. The more recent novels of our favorite midwestern town play on the darker (and just as real) side of humanity. There's a little "Desperate Housewives" in every town if we choose to look for it.

I highly recommend this book for traveling, vacation, depression, or a summer read. It's humor. It is pure joy to read, and you'll devour the pages like potato chips. How can that be bad?

To those who say this is nothing new for G.K... So what? Lots of songs by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young sound similar to older songs by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. We still love them. I say "Keep 'em coming, Garrison."

G.K. has found a niche, performs extremely well in it, and he doesn't have to break new literary ground with every effort. There's enough elbow room here to explore new paths and ideas without over-pursuing newness for newness' sake and "Jumping the shark."...more info

Funny, But Darker Story from Keillor

Small Town Satire

Liberty is the sixth book in the Lake Wobegon series by Garrison Keillor. In this installment of hijinks from the northern land, Clint Bunsen is having a mid-life crisis, or maybe it's a 3/4-life crisis. He just turned sixty, and his fellow citizens don't appreciate his talents as Chairman of the Fourth of July committee anymore. A DNA test told him his ancestors aren't who he thought they were, which means he's not who he thought he was. And to top it all off, he's lusting after the redhead who dresses as Miss Liberty for the parade- she's young enough to be his daughter.

Keillor's portrayal of small town life in Minnesota is rich and hilarious. Within the context of the Fourth of July parade, the reader meets so many flawed, but lovable characters and is taken on so many detours through the history of the town that one can't help but feel that he or she has known this place for a long time. I have not read the other Lake Wobegon books. This book is dark at times. Keillor is not afraid to take us into the sex lives of his characters. We see the numbing and baffling effects of media and technology on an older generation. We see desperate people clinging to any sense of identity they can find. Clint is depressed, but the reader has to keep in mind that Clint's stubborn assumption that his live is crap because of a simple mistake he made in his twenties is Keillor poking us in the ribs. At some point in our lives, we all want a time machine to let us go back and get life right. In the meantime, we look for something to fill us up, and we often look in foolish places. The book is not high art, but it at least tries to make the reader a little introspective.

Liberty is a satire of small town American life with its misplaced idealism and ridiculous rituals, but it also contains hope and the thought that even though life doesn't always turn out as picturesque as pop culture would have us believe it should, we can create meaning in our lives.
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Lake Wobegon Holiday

All the community is back once again in Lake Wobegon. Clint falls in love with a young red headed girl who is trying persuade him to come back to California with her. The annual fourth of July parade become a fiasco with the governor. There are many unexpected twists and turns through out the book.
One thing I notice with this book as with his past previous books, Keillor has written a lot of crude, explicit sexual innuendos throughout the pages. I guess Keillor is trying to keep up with the now modern Lake Wobegon. I do have to say that his early writings of Lake Wobegon are better.
Liberty is a good book, and will keep you laughing and guessing what is going to happen to Clint, Clarance, Irene, and the gang at the Chatterbox Cafe....more info

Clint Bunsen is a burner

Garrison Keillor puts the spotlight on Clint Bunsen in this latest Lake Wobegon novel. Clint feels unappreciated for his leadership as chairman of Lake Wobegon's July Fourth celebration. He has rubbed quite a few townsfolk the wrong way and Clint is having a rough time of it.

His brother Clarence wants Clint to buy out Clarence's share of Bunsen Motors, a business that isn't exactly thriving. Clint is bored with his wife and his life. He is turning 60 and he feels like he has missed out on his chance for happiness until he meets a lovely young woman on the internet....

Fans of A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION will enjoy this book. In contrast to PONTOON, the previous installment in the series, LIBERTY is much darker with a lot less laughs. Keillor's distinctive voice is there but where PONTOON was a romp, LIBERTY is more of a tromp. Clint's depressive persona drags the humor down. If you want to laugh check out PONTOON. If you want to indulge Clint's angst, check out LIBERTY....more info

Garrison Keillor Fan

My husband and I love listening to Garrison Keillor. Liberty is different and I have not heard all of it. So far it is ok but not up to his last story, Pontoon....more info

Give me Liberty or give me another book by garrison keilor

Well written book about Wobegon Lake by one of my favorite writers,Garrison Keilor. Has some very funny spots in it along with both believable and unbelievable persons living in this fictional town.You will enjoy reading this easy to read book....more info

Another tired rehash

Only the most dedicated fan of Lake Wobegon material could love this dreary rehash of much picked-over material. As usual, Keillor's superior distance from his characters makes them impossible to relate to or care about. Everyone in the book is to some degree a buffoon and so we identify with none of them. The attempt to deal with the main character's midlife crisis is swamped by the inability of the reader to get close to him. While occasionally well written from a language point of view, the fundamental lightness of the characters cannot sustain the seriousnes of the theme.
Keillor's humor is sophomoric, reminiscent of burlesque or Mad Magazine.
In the end it is only Keillor's interest in showing himself superior to his background that comes through. Indeed, this is the core theme of most of his work....more info

guys seem to like it; this woman didn't

Comedy and generous-heartedness are missing from this sexual fantasy of GK's. As a longtime fan, I've come to accept that the females in all his stories are one-dimensional, but this one just goes too far that direction to be fun....more info