World Literature, Fiction Subjects

Skipped Parts

Name: Skipped Parts
Author: Tim Sandlin
ISBN: 9781402241710

by Tim Sandlin

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Overview

"Funny, shocking, downright revolting, and occasionally sad. Sandlin is a compelling storyteller...Skipped Parts is somewhere between The Catcher in the Rye and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."
-Los Angeles Times Book Review

Banished to the hinterlands of Wyoming, rebellious Lydia Callahan and her thirteen-year-old son Sam have no choice but to cope. But while Lydia drinks and talks to the moose head on the wall, Sam finds a friend in local girl Maurey Pierce.

One of the wildest, raunchiest, most heartfelt coming-of-age novels of the past thirty years, Skipped Parts puts Tim Sandlin in the upper echelon of contemporary comic novelists.

"Dazzling...moving...Sam's carapace is humor...He thinks like Holden Caulfield and has Joseph Heller's take on despair. His Walter Mitty—like fantasies are tiny comic gems... In the end you'll find yourself rooting for Sam."
-New York Times Book Review

"A lighthearted, amusing, and tender story of preteen wisdom, adult immaturity, and the fine line between...An offbeat, engaging novel."
-Publisher's Weekly

"This witty, often touching portrayal of a dirt-street-wise youth's coming-of-age sparkles with intelligence."
-Booklist

"Thoughtful, surprising, and delightful entertainment."
-St. Louis Post-Dispatch

An amusing new novel by the author of Social Blunders. It's 1963 and 13-year-old Sam Callahan and his tart-tongued, divorced, misbehaving mother, Lydia, must cope as best they can, after they are banished to the hick town of GroVont, Wyoming, by Lydia's Southern gentleman father. "Funny, shocking, downright revolting, and occasionally sad."--Los Angeles Times Book Review. 12,500 print.

About the Author, Tim Sandlin

Tim Sandlin has published eight novels. Two of his screenplays have been made into movies. He turned forty with no phone, TV, or flush toilet and spent more time talking to the characters in his head than the people around him. He now has seven phone lines, four TVs he doesn't watch, three flush toilets, and a two-headed shower. He lives happily (indoors) with his family in Jackson, Wyoming.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Confirming the promise of Sex and Sunsets and Western Swing , Sandlin has created a lighthearted, amusing and tender story of preteen wisdom, adult immaturity and the fine line between. It's 1963 when 13-year-old Sam Callahan and his tart-tongued, divorced, misbehaving mother, Lydia, are banished to the hick town of GroVont, Wyo., by Lydia's Southern-gentleman father, Casper. The only other intelligent sixth-grader in GroVont is spirited, pretty Maurey Pierce. Sharing their books, Sam and Maurey set out to discover what happens in the lost paragraphs between the first kiss and the happily ever after. With some coaching from liberated Lydia, the kids begin practicing for their first real sexual experience. Complications arise when Sam--envisioning romantic futures in the humorous, perceptive short stories he writes--finds himself in love with Maurey. Strong-willed Maurey, however, insists that they pair off with others for ``normal'' dating, even after she discovers she's pregnant. Hilarious teenage dating scenes are neatly contrasted with Lydia's unwise romantic entanglements and the pathetic snobbery of small-town social cliques. Narrated in Sam's adolescent voice--authentic in its tone and use of the vernacular--this offbeat, engaging novel elicits nonstop chuckles and, sometimes, a tear or two. (Mar.)

Library Journal

Sandlin ( Western Swing, LJ 4/1/88) continues his quirky brand of humor in a Western setting, but unfortunately with less originality and freshness. Thirteen- year-old Sam Callahan's wild mother Lydia has displeased her father (who controls the purse strings) and so is banished from South Carolina to the quiet town of GroVont, Wyoming. She spends most of her time sitting around being disdainfully witty and drinking gin while son Sam writes short stories. Along comes precocious adolescent Maurey Pierce, who decides it's time she lost her virginity. Sam and Maurey experiment under liberal Lydia's roof; then Maurey gets pregnant. When she goes for an abortion and finds her mother there, all hell breaks loose. Though wittily told (sometimes to the point of being too cutesy), this is reminiscent of Larry McMurtry's The Last Pic ture Show , but kinkier, in its depiction of the decay and hypocrisy behind the seemingly benign facade of small-town life. Basically, it's been done before. A marginal purchase.-- Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Cty. Free Libs., Seaside, Cal.