Wishin' and Hopin' by Wally Lamb
After the other nuns hauled Sister Dymphna, gibbering and drooling, back the convent; her fifth-grade class weren't quite sure what to expect. They definitely weren't prepared for the beret-wearing, French-spouting Quebecoise the principal of St. Aloysious Gonzaga hired to fill Sister D's sensible shoes. The fall semester, however, proceeded normally after the “incident” - normally for a fifth-grade class that is, which, when you think about it, is about as far from "normal" as you can get. Toss a wannabe bad boy (a twelve-year-old held back twice) and a precocious Russian pre-teen vixen into that heady mix, and Felix Funicello (yes, that Funicello family: she's his third cousin) was destined to have a school year to remember. At the very least, he would have a semester to remember.
As a lay teacher (how the fifth-grade boys giggled at that word, even back in 1964) in a parochial school, Madame Frechette had her work cut out for her. The kids didn't make life any easier, of course - they were fifth-graders, after all. But as the days grew shorter and the annual Christmas show approached, this particular group of little rascals pulled out all the stops. Could Madame tame her unruly charges and pull off the requisite Christmas miracle? Keep on reading...
Sadly, Wishin' and Hopin' falls far short of its holiday billing. It's seems as if Lamb had read Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima back-to-back, then thought to himself, "Hey: if they can do it, so can I!" Unfortunately, he was wrong. Despite (or perhaps because of) the main event’s similarity to other Christmas pageant sagas, Lamb's effort comes off forced and derivative. HarperCollins' decision to brand it a Christmas story notwithstanding, the predictably disastrous pageant doesn't even wander on-stage until well into the book's second half.
Lamb's efforts certainly come off as nostalgic, though his timing is a little shaky - cousin Annette's "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" wouldn't come out for another year, for instance; and it's a little hard to swallow the idea that NBC was selling "Man from U.N.C.L.E." merchandise in the show's third week (this was 1964 - not 2009). Most of that's little niggling stuff (that a researcher should have caught). But Lamb himself should have caught a few other faux pas, such as this decidedly grown-up prose from the pen of a ten-year-old: "It rained on Halloween, gently at first - a moist caress that made the glistening, streetlamp-lit leaves slippery, but not the kind of rain that made your parents say you couldn't go trick-or-treating." A moist caress? from a kid who's still fuzzy on the birds and the bees? I don't think so...
Wishin' and Hopin' left me wishin' for a better Christmas story, and hopin' that this wasn't the best to come out this year!
After the other nuns hauled Sister Dymphna, gibbering and drooling, back the convent; her fifth-grade class weren't quite sure what to expect. They definitely weren't prepared for the beret-wearing, French-spouting Quebecoise the principal of St. Aloysious Gonzaga hired to fill Sister D's sensible shoes. The fall semester, however, proceeded normally after the “incident” - normally for a fifth-grade class that is, which, when you think about it, is about as far from "normal" as you can get. Toss a wannabe bad boy (a twelve-year-old held back twice) and a precocious Russian pre-teen vixen into that heady mix, and Felix Funicello (yes, that Funicello family: she's his third cousin) was destined to have a school year to remember. At the very least, he would have a semester to remember.
As a lay teacher (how the fifth-grade boys giggled at that word, even back in 1964) in a parochial school, Madame Frechette had her work cut out for her. The kids didn't make life any easier, of course - they were fifth-graders, after all. But as the days grew shorter and the annual Christmas show approached, this particular group of little rascals pulled out all the stops. Could Madame tame her unruly charges and pull off the requisite Christmas miracle? Keep on reading...
| Like many a successful adult author, Wally Lamb (The Hour I First Believed) figured he had a Christmas book in him somewhere. Or perhaps his publisher figured he had a Christmas book in him somewhere, I'm not certain. If he does, I doubt this is it - all Wishin' and Hopin' turned out to be was an extended version (some 270 pages worth) of a fifth-grader's diary, and only half the school year at that. Though emblazoned with a Christmas tree ornament and the subtitle "a Christmas story," Wishin' and Hopin' is about as much of a Christmas story as John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent (after all, Christmas does come in winter, at least in the northern hemisphere). |
Sadly, Wishin' and Hopin' falls far short of its holiday billing. It's seems as if Lamb had read Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima back-to-back, then thought to himself, "Hey: if they can do it, so can I!" Unfortunately, he was wrong. Despite (or perhaps because of) the main event’s similarity to other Christmas pageant sagas, Lamb's effort comes off forced and derivative. HarperCollins' decision to brand it a Christmas story notwithstanding, the predictably disastrous pageant doesn't even wander on-stage until well into the book's second half.
Lamb's efforts certainly come off as nostalgic, though his timing is a little shaky - cousin Annette's "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" wouldn't come out for another year, for instance; and it's a little hard to swallow the idea that NBC was selling "Man from U.N.C.L.E." merchandise in the show's third week (this was 1964 - not 2009). Most of that's little niggling stuff (that a researcher should have caught). But Lamb himself should have caught a few other faux pas, such as this decidedly grown-up prose from the pen of a ten-year-old: "It rained on Halloween, gently at first - a moist caress that made the glistening, streetlamp-lit leaves slippery, but not the kind of rain that made your parents say you couldn't go trick-or-treating." A moist caress? from a kid who's still fuzzy on the birds and the bees? I don't think so...
Wishin' and Hopin' left me wishin' for a better Christmas story, and hopin' that this wasn't the best to come out this year!
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