Beaming Sonny Home: A Novel

by Cathie Pelletier

Overview

"The sharp-tongued Mattie...is one of Pelletier's most sublime creations."—Booklist

Fortune hasn't been kind to 66-year-old Mattie Gifford. Her mother committed suicide, her husband slept with her best friend, and she can't stand her three selfish daughters. But she does love her son, Sonny, who nevertheless plunges her into deep despair when he takes two women and a poodle hostage in his ex-wife's trailer. Sonny claims to have seen John Lennon's face in an apparition and gets his own mug on the television news. Beaming Sonny Home is a poignant tale of disappointment and a mother's love that stands as a testament to Pelletier's gift for storytelling.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402294976
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	07/01/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	517 KB

About the Author

Cathie Pelletier was born and raised on the banks of the St. John River, at the end of the road in Northern Maine. She is the author of 11 other novels, including The Funeral Makers (NYTBR Notable Book), The Weight of Winter (winner of the New England Book Award) and Running the Bulls (winner of the Paterson Prize for Fiction). As K. C. McKinnon, she has written two novels, both of which became television films. After years of living in Nashville, Tennessee Toronto, Canada and Eastman, Quebec, she has returned to Allagash, Maine and the family homestead where she was born. She is at work on a new novel.

Editorial Reviews

The townspeople of rural Mattagash, Maine, are only too familiar with the crazy antics of Sonny Gifford. But when he takes two women and a poodle hostage in his ex-wife's trailer in Bangor, even his loving mother Mattie is somewhat taken aback. As Mattie and the rest of the country watch Sonny's latest misadventure unravel on the TV screen, readers will get a good glimpse of how Pelletier (A Marriage Made at Woodstock, LJ 4/15/94) delights followers again and again-first with humorous insights about human folly and then with painful peeks at human frailty. The result is another winner from a wonderful storyteller whose works are reminiscent of works by Kaye Gibbons, Anne Tyler, and Barbara Kingsolver. For all libraries.-Faye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon, Eugene

Library Journal

Mattie Gifford's wayward but charming son, Sonny, has taken two women and a poodle hostage in his ex-wife's red pinstriped house trailer. Now the media are camped outside, and Sonny is constantly being interviewed by CNN (except from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m., when he watches "Star Trek" reruns). He claims to have been inspired by a vision of John Lennon, but Mattie knows that her son is nursing a broken heart, and his desperate ploy is a bid to get attention from his ex-wife. Sonny's sisters have practically moved into Mattie's tiny house--nothing gives them more pleasure than their brother's wrongdoings--and Mattie can't hear herself think as the three women sit glued to the TV, eat pizza after pizza, smoke up a storm, and have at each other just as they did when they were teenagers. This is Pelletier's fourth novel depicting the residents of the fictional town of Mattagash, Maine, and the sharp-tongued Mattie--addicted to picture puzzles, haunted by memories of her bad marriage, regretting the way she coddled Sonny, her most loving child--is one of her most sublime creations.

Joanne Wilkinson

"A small marvel of a book....It is impossible not to be hugely entertained. Cathie Pelletier is a writer of great craft, with a unique ability to be simultaneously sympathetic and wickedly funny....Nattie is the most touching, funny, and dryly astute heroine to come along since the irresistable eccentrics of Eudora Wealty." -- Newsday

Beth Getcheon

"A novel after bittersweet novel, Cathie Pelletier records a human drama as it unfolds....it is Pelletier's gift to be able to coax the drama from stony ground without artifise or sentimentality..." -- Boston Globe

Amanda Heller

"Funny and unexpectedly moving -- especially when Pelletier addresses the distinct but percular bonds that link a parent and child." -- The New York Times Book Review

Ruth Coughlin

Pelletier (A Marriage Made at Woodstock, 1994, etc.) is funnier than ever in this sardonic tale of an upstate Maine mother's love for her underachieving son—even as he's taking hostages in his ex-wife's trailer home and babbling to the press that John Lennon made him do it.

Mattie Gifford may never have traveled far from Mattagash, but at age 66 she knows the difference between her three good-for- nothing, gossipy, middle-aged daughters and Sonny, their younger brother and Mattie's golden child. At 36, Sonny hasn't done much more with his life than get arrested for playing pranks and wander from one pretty girl to the next, but Mattie has always managed to talk the authorities out of punishing him too severely, and in return Sonny has always paid tribute to his dear old mom. But this episode, Mattie realizes, is different, as her exultant daughters switch on the TV news to reveal that Sonny has apparently gone crazy down in Bangor, kidnapping two women and a poodle from a local bank and locking them up in his ex-wife's trailer. Sonny's claim that John Lennon appeared on his television set, commanding him to do something to focus the world's attention on starving children everywhere, is typical of the oversensitive boy Mattie remembers. Police descend on the trailer park, reporters snoop around Mattagash, and friends and relatives alternately harass and comfort her while Mattie concentrates on trying to figure out where she went wrong. Acknowledging that she has failed to achieve either of a woman's two basic requirements for happiness—marrying her best friend and loving the work she does—Mattie determines that it's not too late to put her life in order, even as Sonny's confrontation leads to its inevitably tragic end.

Pelletier hits just the right mix of vulnerability and humor in her latest work, leaving the reader hungry for more.

Kirkus Reviews

"Hilarious…Another wry comic turn from Cathie Pelletier." — The New Yorker

"A small marvel of a book… Mattie is the most touching, funny, and drily astute heroine to come along since the irresistible eccentrics of Eudora Welty." — Newsday

"It is Pelletier’s gift to be able to coax the drama from stony ground without artifice or sentimentality." — Boston Globe

From the Publisher