Keillor is one of my favorite authors, and this little book didn't
disappoint. He's a humorist with a keen insight and a way with words
that I find very entertaining. This book wouldn't necessarily be
classed as humor, since it is a novel, but it was very funny. Had me
rolling a couple of times and chuckling all through it.

The enterprising Larry Wyler is frustrated with life in St. Paul, and
his marriage to Iris, an earnest Democrat out to save the world one
homeless person at a time. Larry is a writer and longs to live in the
literary world, though he's lucky if he sells enough articles to pay the
heat bill. After a bout with a bad head cold and heavy doses of
antihistamines, echinacea, Vitamin C and zinc, he manages to write a
best selling novel, Spacious Skies, that shoots to the top of the best
seller list and earns him a ticket to Manhattan, a million-dollar
apartment with a fabulous terrace and view, and an office at The New
Yorker magazine among the writers he has admired his whole life and the
legendary editor William Shawn. And Iris isn't at all interested in
going to New York. She's satisfied with the bungalow in St. Paul, her
work at the shelter, and besides, she wants to put in another row of
butter beans next spring. So Larry moves to New York alone and lives
the wonderful life of an author. Until he suffers from a severe case of
writer's block after his follow-up novel, Amber Waves of Grain, bombs badly.

An invitation to write a newspaper advice column, "Ask Mr. Blue," for
the paper back home provides a much needed distraction (and steady
paycheck). It's a pretty low rung on the literary ladder, but writing
commonsense advice to the lonely and the frustrated initiates Larry's
own long recovery and thanks to the miracle of email, he can do the
whole column from New York. He doles out wisdom to Exasperated, whose
wife gives up her judgeship for figure skating; Nice Lady, who is
abusive to the obese; and Secular Humanist, who suddenly notices his
girlfriend is Amish. Slowly, painfully, Wyler discovers that the
literary world he's dreamed of all his life isn't all he thought it was
and he finds a measure of clarity for his own life. And then he sets
out to win back his wife's affection.

This was a pleasant read and classic Keillor. It gets a 5. ( )

I found that this went on a bit, lost my interest halfway through and was a struggle to finish it. ( )

At the book-signing for this book, Garrison Keillor said that it was an affectionate semi-portrayal of his first ex-wife, who had recently died. He must have liked her quite a bit. Anyway, this is a humorous and semi-poignant look at a Minnesota writer who strikes it big with his first novel, and leaves his idealistic do-gooder wife to go to New York and write for the "New Yorker". There he undergoes a monumental case of writer's block, and owing to the magazine's legendary tolerance is kept on staff for years, while he at first lives high on the hog of fame and fortune, both of which gradually dwindle as he casts about in search of inspiration. Eventually he ghosts as an advice columnist for a hometown Minnesota newspaper, where he makes an attempt to work through his own problems as he figures out those of others. The book is uneven, but usually quite good and readable, with many moments of comic brilliance (in particular, a hilarious account of the novelist as lover, being not quite able to rise to an occasion). From his talk, it almost seems as though Keillor is working through some guilt by portraying his ex-wife in such a saintly way, and his own character as basically a semi-loveable lout. ( )