Diana Page Jordan | Book Reviews and Inspiration

Wishin’ and Hopin’: A Christmas Story

By Wally Lamb

Published November 10, 2009 (Hardcover) Harper

The gray skies pelt us with hard rain in Portland, Oregon, while our east coast friends have the snowstorm we had last year.  They try to disguise the secret delight in their voices, but it sneaks out. Snow!

No winter snowstorms for us, so I choose a Christmasy book to remind me.  Wally Lamb’s Wishin’ and Hopin’: A Christmas Story is a 180 from his serious bestsellers – I Know This Much is True, She’s Come Undone, and The Hour I First Believed. A fifth-grade boy tells his own story in Lamb’s latest – Felix looks like Dondi from the comics, which, thankfully for him, gives him an innocent edge when the teachers in his Catholic schools try to nail whoever pulled the latest prank.

It’s Christmastime in the book, and Felix Funicello – oh, did I mention his cousin is the famous Mouseketeer Annette Funicello with the fabulous secondary sex characteristics – Felix says that, not me.   Anyway, Felix fields a trio of thrilling holiday events – his mom is to be on TV for a holiday bake-off, he is to be on TV on one of those kid shows where kids can – and do – say anything, and, then there’s the school Christmas pageant.

Wally Lamb pulls it off.  While I didn’t go to Catholic school – there was one Catholic family on the block, we were Unitarian, and the other 37-homes were Jewish – Wally’s picture of the sixties are so achingly familiar.   I grew up after duck-and-cover, about the time of Sputnik and our race to the moon, and, yes, we, too, had a family of Russian emigrants, but ours was from Czechoslovakia.  It was a time just as we got broken open — by the sexual revolution, by the race riots and by the assassinations of our amazing leaders.

I wonder what sparked Wally Lamb to write this funny, bittersweet, delightful novel, with the perfect, whipped-cream-on-top ending.  I will find out in a few minutes, when I interview him on Open Book with Diana Page Jordan. I’ll tell you in tomorrow’s blog – or you can peek – the site is www.pdx.fm/open-book.

Happy Holidays!