Synopsis
This final entry in the Calvin Becker trilogy continues the story of an utterly unpredictable family—filled with the same wit, warmth, and flashing insight that earned widespread acclaim for Portofino and Zermatt. Calvin Becker’s family have survived and persisted as Bible-thumping missionaries; it’s their duty to spread the Word to everyone they meet. But now, having weathered a crisis precipitated by the godless Swiss, they face an even greater spiritual challenge right in their own home: Grandma. Foulmouthed, foul-tempered, and heathen through and through, she’s staying in the spare room, recuperating from a broken hip—and making it next to impossible for the Beckers to do the Lord’s work. Calvin’s pious mom is determined to save Grandma’s soul, even if she’s doing it through gritted teeth and deadly measures. His father’s spending more and more time in his room, blasting opera to drown out the old lady’s voice. And Calvin wishes things would just get back to normal so they can go on vacation and he can get close to the girl he loves. But then Calvin starts to understand Grandma a little better and appreciate her a little more. After all, misery loves company.
Publishers Weekly
Thirteen-year-old Calvin Becker gets all the best lines in this irreverent, amusing sequel to Schaeffer's 1992 Portofino. Like that novel, this one follows the adventures of the Becker family, Presbyterian missionaries, as they try to convert the people of "Pagan Europe" in the late 1960s. Hapless, accident-prone Calvin, confused by the twin adolescent terrors of sex and the Foreknowledge/Predestination debate, finds his life complicated further when foul-mouthed, chronically sacrilegious Grandma breaks her hip and moves in with the family. While his father goes increasingly insane, Calvin emerges from erotic daydreams about his English pen-pal Jennifer long enough to form an unholy alliance with Grandma and to run off seeking the counsel of an aging Italian painter (befriended in the first book). Schaeffer's slapstick jokes and often tender evocations of youth make for an uneasy but entertaining cross between Portnoy's Complaint and TV's The Wonder Years. His nuanced characterization of Calvinpart malicious prankster, part helpless victim of his absurd familybreathes life into the stock ensemble cast and heavy-handed religious satire. (Sept.)