"A Christmas Blizzard"

A Christmas Blizzard by Garrison Keillor

I'm not sure what to say about this one, except that it sure isn't your average Christmas story. It's not sappy or corny or cliche. It's... well let's say it's different.

More than anything it reminded me of Cold Comfort Farm. Odd things happen without any previous hint that things are going to get weird. When I'm in the right mood, or I know it's that kind of book, I find that sort of thing funny, but I wasn't in the right mood till about page 20 so till then I just thought it was a strange story. After that, I enjoyed it.

The story is about James Sparrow, a wealthy man living with his wife in a Chicago highrise. She loves Christmas but is sick with the flu; he wants to avoid Christmas by going to their Hawaiian vacation home. To complicate matters James gets a phone call from his home town saying his Uncle Earl is probably dying.

James wants to head for Hawaii right away because a storm is coming and he doesn't want to be storm-stayed but a sense of family duty has him flying toward North Dakota and Uncle Earl instead. He ends up stranded there and this is when things begin to get weird. A wolf talks to him and there are other unusual things but I don't want to give too much away. Just be ready for anything when you read it.

This is my first book by Garrison Keillor but it's piqued my interest so I'm going to check out some of his other writing. There's quite a list of titles on the "Also by Garrison Keillor" page, a couple of which sound interesting so I expect I'll be posting more about him sometime in the coming year.