Two Enthusiastic Thumbs Up

Since I plugged this book as a favorite, and I hadn't read it in a number of years, I thought I should probably reread it so I didn't end up with virtual egg on my blogging face.

I pulled my copy off the shelf and was surprised on opening it to rediscover that it is inscribed to me and autographed by the author (a gift from my brother in 1988.)

I finished it this morning and was struck, once again, by just how good it is. Here's a passage describing what happens when Wendall, the protagonist, has the bad fortune to be sprayed by a skunk:

Crawling from beneath the steps, he thought for sure he was going to suffocate in the stench that had been dealt him. His eyes smarted so sharply he thought he was going blind, and whatever it was that had been olfactory in his nose had been repulsed all the way to the inside top of his head where it clung by its sticky nodule feet upside down like a terrified lizard. Even the skin on his hands, as if attacked by flames, seemed to be shriveling, the skin splitting banana-like and peeling back off each finger.

Disaster was a magnet to Cornelia: she reached him quicker than she had when he'd gone hunting cobwebs in the barn with John T.'s .410.

"Oh Lord!" she shrieked. "A skunk!"

Bright deduction. Wendall removed his glasses, surprised that the plastic frames hadn't melted or at least been bubbled a little. He stood up shaking and squinted onion-sized tears out of his eyes. He pinched his nose, the nostrils of which burned witheringly, and the pinching only made the raw pain worse. He thought: If it hadn't been for the war, Fred would never have gone overseas, he himself would never have gone to Aunt Nancy, Aunt Nancy would never have sent him to Stebbinsville, he would never have met his grandfather, his grandfather would never have urged him to trap pigeons, he would never have crawled under the damn porch ...

Now I am planning to reread The Milagro Beanfield War which I recall had passages that made me laugh until my sides ached the first time I read it. (It was also made into a bad movie by Robert Redford.)