I LOVE GK. What a perfect book to read, with 2 trips to Italy pending - one with GK, on the APHC Cruise, and another with a group of pilgrims and singers in December and January! ( )

This is my first GKeillor book, I read it on a vacation, picked it up because I'm from Minnesota, and like to travel to Italy. It made me laugh several times, but was a little predictable, yet far-fetched, if that is possible...good beach book, for some light reading. ( )

At the risk of sounding like one of the "pilgrims" I can say I didn't like this as much of other stuff I've read by Mr. Keillor. I thought the characters were whiny and ungrateful and probably like some tours I've been on with other people. I found that I kept reading, but also kept asking myself why I was still reading. I guess, like many trips, I was just relieved when everyone got home relatively ok, but I won't be recommending this. ( )

You can take the Lake Wobegoners out of Lake Wobegon, but you can’t take the Lake Wobegon out of Lake Wobegoners. Transplanted from the Minnesotan town of Lake Wobegon to the European capital of Rome, a dozen residents of Lake Wobegon carry the town in their heads and manners. They may be sat drinking Italian wine in a piatza, but their conversation is less about what they have seen and done in Italy and more about old stories from home. They might as well be sat around the table in the local diner, shooting the breeze, chewing the fat.

Except that because they are far from home, they are able to be more themselves than they would if guarded by the normal constraints of friends and neighbours. So secrets do come out but, when they do, there is very little in the shock, horror gasp revelation and more in the we-suspected-as-much or that’s-not-so-bad reaction. Some small town support has been brought to bear on big city cynicism and, in the hurly burly of Italy, it’s small town America that seems civilized.

The Lake Wobegoners are there to honour one of their own, fallen during the liberation of Italy from the Nazis in World War Two. The Wobegoner in question is reported to have died a hero’s death and is now buried in Italy. Rather than the aim of the journey, for many travelling this is just an excuse to travel and to confirm exactly what they always suspected: that Lake Wobegon isn’t that bad and it’s sure as hell better than anywhere else.

This is not, though, Gary Kellior poking fun at small town Americans. We know this because Kellior himself is on the trip.

That the author has written himself into his own novel is either a tremendous conceit or neat trick, depending on your point of view. If, in real life, you knew somebody who started to refer to themselves in the third person, you’d have cause for concern and be reaching for the restraints before they started referring to themselves as Emperor of the Known World while wearing a crown crafted of tin foil.

Kellior’s treatment of himself at the hands of the other characters is not kind. The view of a Lake Wobegoner of anyone who has left the town is baffled confusion – why would anyone leave Lake Wobegon? Their attitude to anyone who has left and come back depends on whether that person returned in triumph (treated with suspicion, if they did that well why are they back?) or in not such triumphant circumstances (treated with sympathy, makes Wobegoners feel justified that all they thought about life beyond the town is true).

Certainly, they are suspicious as hell of a writer who scribbles in his notebook during their conversations, twisting the most innocent of remarks about travelling to foreign parts into something that makes dwellers of a small town look folksy.

It’s never quite apparent what Kellior wants from the reader – is he sending himself up and expecting us to laugh? It’s certainly a pantomime description he gives of himself, at his best he’s hapless, while the rest of the tour group consider him gruff and rude. Is this reaction to anticipated criticism? Is a blending of the truth, that Gary Kellior is a writer, with the fantasy that he creates, of a small town in America populated by a variety of eccentrics, an attempt to somehow convince us that the characters he has created have some sort of basis in fact?

It’s hard to tell and, in truth, the inclusion of Kellior in his own novel is something of a miss-fire and a distraction from the rest of the novel, which is slight and, one feels, might have been better if reduced to a novella.

He has to make himself something of a buffoon because for some reason he feels he can’t describe himself as; ‘Kellior, six foot six of rippling bronzed muscle was the sort of man men wanted to be, and women wanted to be with’, which is a shame because he could at least have had some fun with an alter-ego, instead of just stoking his own ego. ( )

Only Margie Krebsbach knows the whole truth of the journey to Italy undertaken by 12 Lake Wobegonners to place a picture on the gravestone of WWII hero Gussie Norlander. Some of the pilgrims are more enthusiastic than others; Mr. Keillor, in a surprising personal appearance, is not really welcomed by the rest of the group. But in true "It was a quiet week..." fashion, the trip's absurdities evolve into meaningful experiences. Margie discovers she doesn't know as much as she thought, yet gains in both character and wealth, and Mr. Keillor's notebook assures him of the last word. ( )