Dairy Queen Days - Hardcover

Inman, Robert

3.69

326 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316418730 ISBN 13: 9780316418737

Publisher: Little Brown & Co, 1997

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Coming of age in the small Southern town that bears his family name, Trout Mosley struggles to free himself from the burdens of his mentally disturbed mother and his volatile, obese, Methodist preacher father

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Review:

In the summer of 1979, 16-year-old Trout Mosley finds his life turned upside down. His mother has been hospitalized in Atlanta for depression; his preacher father has been scandalizing his parishioners with strange comparisons of Jesus and Elvis Presley, and Trout himself has been packed off to the small Georgia town that bears his family's name. Here, he becomes reacquainted with a number of eccentric relatives, gets involved with a strong-minded girl named Keats Dubarry, and lands a job at the local Dairy Queen.

But Trout's summer is hardly idyllic. Keats's father is involved in trying to unionize local mill workers, and his efforts will pit the Dubarrys against the Mosleys in a final confrontation that will change everything. Alternately sweet and sad, Dairy Queen Days is, as Trout's father says of a spoonful of ice cream, "good for the soul."

From Kirkus Reviews:

Inman (Old Dogs and Children, 1991, etc.) returns with another small-town southern tale, this time focusing on a boy's coming of age during the late '70s. Young Trout Mosely has to move back to Mosely, Georgia, a company town named after his grandfather, when his mother, Irene, suddenly checks into an Atlanta psychiatric facility. Trout's father, Joe Pike, an ex-football player and Methodist preacher, goes off the deep end as well, refurbishing an old Triumph motorcycle and roaring toward Texas, mouthing homely platitudes about the Good Lord's intentions. Joe Pike is forcibly transferred back to the Methodist Church in Mosely, where his sermons astound his sister, matriarch of the dying mill, and amuse an older brother, a whiskey-besotted ex-spy named Phinizy who's come home to die. There's also an embittered, handicapped girl who was run over by a Mosely truck when she was four; she and Trout get jobs at the Dairy Queen, where together they puzzle over the flaws and foibles of their parents and do some growing up. Joe Pike comes in, occasionally, to slurp Blizzards and meditate out loud on the Dairy Queen as the center of the universe. In addition, Inman introduces a canny local sheriff, a gay cousin in Atlanta, and sundry other colorful types, and, sometimes, his blend of humor, sorrow, and down-home charm makes for a touching evocation of growing up. More often, though, Inman seems to have taken on too much and can't satisfactorily work it all out. When Trout heads off on his dad's Triumph to visit his mother, his adventures on the road seem contrived. Worse, his mother, when he finally sees her, has no wisdom to communicate. Worse still, Joe Pike never pulls himself together and, in the end, is just more pathetic than tragic. Inman's likable tone and command of his settings aren't enough to redeem his overloaded story, which winds down into a forced, unsatisfying conclusion. -- Copyright �1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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