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Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House

(Blandings #1)

Eric Hodgins,

William Steig (Illustrator)

3.78 · Rating details · 735 ratings · 82 reviews

The classic tale of leaving the city and building a house in the country, only to find country life isn't so simple. But it is hilarious.

Mr. Blandings, a successful New York advertising executive, and his wife want to escape the confines of their tiny midtown apartment. They design the perfect home in the idyllic country, but soon they are beset by construction troubles,

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Paperback, 228 pages

Published February 11th 2005 by Simon & Schuster (first published 1946)

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· 735 ratings · 82 reviews

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Mar 20, 2020 Kelly (and the Book Boar) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: liburrrrrry-book, everything-old-is-new-again, loveable-losers, or-just-watch-the-movie, read-in-2020

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

My initial reaction to finding out the national treasure who is Tom Hanks had been diagnosed with the Coronavirus was . . . .

But then I got distracted when the news started showing clips of some of his movies and mentioned that this fave . . . .

Was a remake of another old fave . . . .

Which I should have been smart enough to realize, but somehow never put two-and-two together. When threats of the library shutting down tem ...more

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May 19, 2014 Hannah rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014-reads, humor

I've been wanting to read this for ever (it seems), as the Cary Grant movie based on the book is one of my favorite black and white "oldie-goldies".

What a letdown the book was. Not even a fraction as funny, charming and endearing as the movie. The coarse language came as an added (and unwelcome) surprise considering this was written in the 1940's. At times, I even found it a depressive story; rather ironic considering it's supposed to be a humorous story of the trials and tribulations of home ow ...more

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Aug 18, 2013 Emily rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This is a hard book to know how to rate. It's a story of a husband and wife who decide to buy a home in the country so they can have an idyllic life away from the noise and bustle of the city. You could also say it's a book about a mid-life crisis. Their decisions are mainly emotional, hasty, and unprepared for so they get into a bunch of hassle and get taken advantage of at every turn. At times it was amusing, though most of the time I found it rather annoying. Most of their true problems could ...more

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Jul 24, 2014 Mike rated it liked it

One summer in my middle school years I frequently stayed up late, watching on television the movie being shown on "The Late Show" (there was a different movie every night). I remember seeing the film version of this book then. Cary Grant starred in it as Mr. Blandings.

This book is essentially a comedic tale of a naive advertising executive and his wife in New York City who buy an old country home in Connecticut. As things turn out they have to tear down the house and have a new one built. By the ...more

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Jul 12, 2017 Alyse rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-discussion, humor

Laugh-out-loud funny. I only wish there were more entries in Mrs. Blandings Diary.

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Aug 03, 2011 Darla rated it it was amazing

Hilarious! Just as good as the 1948 Cary Grant movie based on it. The major difference between the novel and the movie is that the movie's time line is majorly compressed (the whole story takes place in a single season) compared to the novel's (the story takes place over a few years). Also, the movie imposed a past romantic history between Mrs. Blandings and the lawyer Bill Cole, which wasn't evident in the book. Most characters in the movie were very true to their counterparts in the novel, how ...more

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Aug 03, 2009 Sarah rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2009

Hysterical!! 1930s semi-screwball comedy of errors in which a Manhattan couple decides to build a house in the country. Everything that can go wrong...

Made me feel better about my own real estate fumblings. It was also highly quotable, as when Mr. Blandings learns that he must pay the full balance of the mortgage because he didn't get the consent of the mortgage holder before tearing down the house to build a new one:

"I make it a point not to criticize your drinking habits, even when I do not ...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Jess rated it it was ok

I don't know if you've seen the old Cary Grant movie made from this book, but my advice is to watch the movie and not worry about the book. It was really stressful--one catastrophe after another, without all that fun Cary Grantness to give you some comic relief. There was humor, and it was pretty well-written, but I just couldn't enjoy it because it was riddled with too much swearing. It was written in the 40's, for heaven's sake! I just didn't expect it to be so foul. And I think it hit too clo ...more

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Feb 14, 2019 Robert rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: x2018-19-season

A few stylistic bits are off-putting but understandable - switching viewpoints from Mr to Mrs halfway through and a much larger vocabulary than most current authors use being the most prominent; and the narrative and timeline gets a bit fuzzy - they go to supervise construction of an unfinished house buy only mention in passing where they're living while they do this, and that only after a hundred pages of mystery; but even so the humor is still spot on and relevant today with the universal pitf ...more

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Apr 23, 2019 Lisa Brantly rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, humor, 20th-century, american

It would be funnier if it wasn't quite as frighteningly accurate 😳
(I wonder if folks who didn't care for it ever built or remodelled a house?) ...more

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Jan 27, 2018 Maureen Wynn rated it it was ok

If you've never seen the Cary Grant and Myrna Loy movie that is based on this book, watch the movie and give the book a pass. In fact, if you HAVE seen the movie, go watch it again - it's great! The book has some elements of the humor that makes the movie so much fun, but only if you're willing to laugh at poor, naive Mr. Blandings as he stumbles through all the trials and tribulations of home ownership. I realize that researching "the best way to dig a well" is easier now in the era of Google t ...more

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Mar 23, 2017 Susan added it · review of another edition

Shelves: did-not-finish, fiction, 2017

I found that I agree with some of the reviewers here. While this book was OK, it just wasn't interesting enough to finish. I read halfway through and most of it was interesting, I got a few chuckles, but then felt it bogged down in the details.

I made it to the part where Mr. Blandings is explaining to Mrs. Blandings how the well was being dug, how the expense was charged, and mathematically how much water was expected to gush forth per minute. Mr. Blandings stated that after explanation Mrs. Bl ...more

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Apr 26, 2017 Sheila rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Mr. Blandings is doing well at work and decides it is time to own his own house. So he goes to Connecticut and buys land to build his dream house.

It starts slow. It is better when you read it with sarcasm as Mr. Blandings has trouble with the seller, the architects, and the builder. It becomes extremely funny in Book 2 when I read Mrs. Blandings' journal entries about it. The ownership of the house is funny also as Mr. Blandings figures out how much this house cost him and now he is responsible ...more

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Sep 20, 2017 Anmiryam rated it really liked it

Perhaps not quite as charming as the film with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, but still a wonderfully funny and relevant read. The amounts of money involved seem trivial today -- until you begin to adjust for inflation! Seriously, if you have ever built, or even renovated, a house, this book will strike a chord that will make you laugh and cringe in equal measure.

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Sep 05, 2011 Deborah rated it liked it

This was a nice little trip back in time, but it also shows the more things change the more they stay the same. Home renovation/redecoration never goes the way you plan & it NEVER costs what you think it should!!!

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Sep 05, 2013 Deanne rated it liked it

Shelves: comedy

Mr and Mrs Blandings find there dream home, but it quickly turns into a nightmare. A book for anyone who's bought a house only to discover all the things the seller neglected to mention. ...more

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Jun 13, 2019 Shirley Yount rated it it was ok

One of the few times that the movie is better than the book.

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Nov 22, 2015 Lauren Stoolfire rated it liked it · review of another edition

Mr. Blandings, an NYC advertising executive, and his wife and kids want to leave their tiny Midtown apartment for a farmhouse in the country. The place they end up buying, and get thoroughly ripped off on, should have been demolished years ago, so they'll need build a brand new house. Pretty much everything that can go wrong, does go wrong while trying to design and construct the perfect home. This house may be the nightmare that does him in, or bankrupts him.

I picked up this novel published in ...more

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Mar 07, 2021 Rafeeq O. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Eric Hodgins' 1946 Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a wry, thoroughly enjoyable 5-star tale of a well-to-do advertising executive of the innocent interwar period and his droll and long-suffering wife on the grueling, years-long quest, part Thorstein Veblen and part "ravishing desire" (1946 Simon & Schuster hardcover, page 14), for a stately property in the country such as those owned by other prosperous and self-satisfied bigwigs "finding rural escape from the advertising-agency business Eric Hodgins' 1946 Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a wry, thoroughly enjoyable 5-star tale of a well-to-do advertising executive of the innocent interwar period and his droll and long-suffering wife on the grueling, years-long quest, part Thorstein Veblen and part "ravishing desire" (1946 Simon & Schuster hardcover, page 14), for a stately property in the country such as those owned by other prosperous and self-satisfied bigwigs "finding rural escape from the advertising-agency business and the Grand Central Zone" (page 17).

Having repeatedly enjoyed the 1948 film adaptation starring Cary Grant and the placidly sly Myrna Loy, I always presumed Mr. Brandings Builds His Dream House was a contemporaneous tale of the exuberant postwar boom. It is not, however. The book tells us that the last time "a city dweller" had offered to buy the old Hackett place was August of 1929...after which, adds Hodgins dryly, "[s]ome financial trouble in the cities had then ensued, and the deal had not matured" (page 17). Although "his friends had told Eph Hackett that he would probably have to wait a long, long time now to sell his property at the price he wanted," the novel opens "less than a decade later" (page 17), and here come some city slickers again. The period, then, is something a bit earlier than 1939. The mushroom cloud of the atom bomb has not yet towered threateningly, the death camps and gas chambers are yet unknown, the fighting in China is far enough away to be ignored, and Hitler still appears just a comical little figure with a funny mustache. It is an insular, oh-so comfortable time we scarcely can imagine now.

In any event, I discovered to my surprise that a number of other very familiar and amusing things were written into the film rather than being part of the base novel itself. There is no undergraduate dating backstory between Muriel and lawyer Cole here, for example, and hence no exquisite pipe-and-bathrobe "'Cole. Bill Cole. Friend of the family'" scene after the children are kept away one night by a washed-out bridge; here Bill is only "her husband's young friend and attorney" (page 36; emphasis added) rather than a middle-aged contemporary. The thirteen- and eleven-year-old daughters being educated by the "crackpot" Miss Stellwagon (page 25) in the presumably expensive "progressive school" with its "creative, anarchistic, and sexual freedoms" (page 15), by the way, make only the briefest of appearances here, and rather than being rather being dry foils for their father's bumbling, their immaturity is mildly amusing instead. There's no live-in cook and housekeeper Gussie either, and hence no "If you ain't eatin' Wham, you ain't eatin' ham!" off-the-cuff last-minute save for the dreaded big account that means Jim's job or lack thereof.

In fact, here there is no writer's block at all, and instead the protagonist's professional success already has been ensured when, "[w]hile still a relatively young man in his profession, Mr. Blandings had been lucky enough to hit upon a three-word slogan for a laxative account that had broken four successive agency vice-presidents. So compulsive did these three simple monosyllables become, iterated and reiterated to the metabolizing public from magazine pages, billboards, radio loudspeakers (despite veiled warnings from the Federal Communications Commission), and skywriting airplanes, that within three years' time a fading cathartic had come to stand with Ivory Soap, Wrigley's Chewing Gum, and Campbell's Soup as one of the dozen most widely recognized and demanded brand names in America" (page 15). And what are those magical "three simple monosyllables" that can solidify a man's entire career? "Makes you crap!" is my hope, but Hodgins' mock-heroic coyly elides the answer.

In any event, the novel begins in medias res as Mr. and Mrs. Blandings accompany the sharp, never-named "real-estate man" casually "[u]sing a penknife as a key" (page 4) to enter the decrepit old farmhouse. The view out the back window indeed is gorgeous: "The land rushe[s] downward to the river a mile away; then it [rises] again, layer after layer, plane after plane of hills and higher hills lighter beyond them. The air [is] luminous, and there [a]re twenty shades of browns and greens in the plowed and wooded and folded earth" (page 4). Blandings may attempt the pose that "[t]he notion that might buy this old farmhouse, or any other, anywhere, ever, [i]s light, gossamer nonsense; a whimsy; a caprice" (page 6), but of course these city rubes have sold themselves.

They also, of course, are "being flimflammed" (page 40). After all, in that neck of the woods, "[w]hen the natives sell to one another it's around $40 an acre or less," and whereas "$100 is the standard top-gouge real-estate price per acre to city slickers," Blandings' already high bid combined with a reduction from a very liberally estimated 50 acres to a surveyed 35-ish acres "brings the price up to $330 an acre" (page 42). And while we initially may shrug at the $11,000 purchase price--before needing to tear down the original unsound house, then designing, building, and outfitting a new one brings the project to more like $56,263.97, which does not include ensuing "barn repair, driveways, landscaping, boughten and transported trees, lawn seed, repairs to fences, the setting out of shrubs and bushes, tree surgery, restoration of orchards, etc." (page 233)--we should remember that just as a lot of water has gone under the bridge since 1937 or '38, so has a lot of inflation. In fact, ye olde Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator might inform us that the initial 11 thou' would be akin to $202,000 today, so that 56k semi-final cost is over $1,000,000. Ouch.

As long as it's not our million smackers being spent, though, the tale is a hilarious one. At one point, even before the new hole in the ground has been dynamited from the unforgiving rock, Mr. Blandings ruefully longs for the "true privacy" and "[t]rue detachment" of "the pavements of the harsh, uncaring city, across a mile of which a man with a dagger might pursue a screaming woman with a child in her arms and evoke...no feelings other than mild wonder and philosophic speculation" (page 158). 'Tis too late to go back, though. And although he cannot quite recall how the slide into mayhem began and would prefer to blame someone--"Was Mrs. Blandings responsible? Mr. Blanings sort of thought so, but he could not exactly recall" (page 135)--he knows that he himself has also swallowed all the guff "he had ever read from the pens of all his brother copywriters" (page 135) about the joys, indeed glory, of home ownership. With a narrative that can shrug airily that "there [i]s no way on earth to cut a $31,000 house down to a $21,000 house any more than there [i]s a way of making marmosets out of a zebra by trimming down and rearranging the zebra" (page 139), Eric Hodgins in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House will carry us from one cringeworthy situation and zany piece of prose to the next, making us love every moment of it. ...more

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Feb 06, 2019 Sue rated it really liked it

Shelves: 21giggles, myp, 11fave, 14zzz

Having lived through the renovation of a house myself, I can attest to this story's accuracy, but it is also far funnier than I remember the actual experience!

Mr and Mrs Blandings decide to move to the country. They find a house they love, although it could do with a little updating. Well, so they think, until the engineer and architect get to work. The repairs will cost so much that they decide to replace it with a new house. Oh dear! We follow them through the increasingly painful experiences ...more

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Sep 17, 2007 Sarah Sammis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: pc

In the BookCrossing forums there is a long standing debate about film adaptations of books. With a well-read group of people, there is a lot of reluctance in the group at seeing the film adaptations as they are so often changed. I am firmly in the camp of film adaptation lovers. With so many books published every year it is impossible to read a significant cross section of them. Add up all the previous years and one is quickly faced with an avalanche of books! That's where the film adaptations c ...more

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Aug 16, 2008 Sue rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: every homeowner and especially for prospective homebuilders!

No reader, even if his adventure in construction never went beyond adding a closet to an apartment, or redecorating an office, will fail to discover somewhere in this architectural saga himself (and one's ability to be suckered). I discovered this delightful book while reading Architectural Digest (June 1991). They ran an article entitled:"Mr Blandings' Dream House - Revisiting an American Icon in Connecticut." I was so intrigued, I read the book, researched the author and the house in Connectic ...more

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Nov 26, 2018 Katie rated it it was ok

Shelves: 1940-s, modern-classics

About:
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House was written by Eric Hodgins and was published in 1946. This comic novel follows a man and his wife as they attempt to build their dream house. They run into all sorts of unforeseen circumstances and it ends up costing them much more than they thought it would!

Did I Like It?:
I picked this book up because I like the film that was based on this book starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. The movie is a cute and funny old black and white. The story in the boo ...more

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Feb 18, 2014 Kitty Jay rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: Mom, Dad, Mike

Shelves: checked-out-from-library, fiction

My mom and dad ran a custom home building company, one where I grew up half on job sites and the other half sitting quietly in a corner as clients discussed what they wanted. For reasons that would become apparent, the movie with Cary Grant, Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, was one of their favorites.

I didn't even know it was a book until recently, and immediately checked it out from the library. If you're familiar with the movie - and liked it - take heart, because the script paid close att ...more

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Nov 25, 2008 Phil rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone doing home construction or even renovation.

Shelves: fiction

There is no one who has ever built a home or a major addition that can't relate to this book.

Written in the mid-1940s, it was made into a movie in the early 50's with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy that virtually used the book as a script, not merely a story line. Both are hilarious.

To escape the tiny Manhattan apartment, the Blandings decide to buy a house in suburban Connecticut - a creaky old house that they quickly decide (or is decided for them) to tear down. The modest house Mr. Blandings envi ...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Vasilia rated it really liked it

Can say for certain that this book is utterly brilliant and worth at least 4.5 stars for sheer truthfulness and insight. Couldn't entirely appreciate this truthfulness however, as the comedy struck too close to home to be enjoyable! When you're reading about the trials of building a home and every situation seems familiar (either because you've fallen into these traps in the past, or can easily see yourself doing so in the future), the laughs become morbid.

On a more positive note, the language i ...more

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Aug 09, 2008 Maureen rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: everyone

Shelves: novel, humor

This is a really, really funny book, touching on just about every nightmare a home owner could possibly imagine. Eric Hodgins put his never-used engineering degree from M.I.T. to work overtime, to come up with dilemmas from jacking up the sagging foundation, to the famous"Taj Mahal" closet with changes totaling $1247.00. Mr. Blandings and his equally long-suffering wife are never mentioned by first name, but they still come across as the vulnerable, fallible type of people most of us are when co ...more

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Jun 05, 2015 Lisa rated it liked it

I've loved the movie for years, so it's no surprise I enjoyed the book. Anyone can relate to Blanding's situation...stuck between dreams and realities and the capital required to make that happen. It's always more than you plan for, even when you think you're being frugal.
The book didn't have the same pace as the movie; but I couldn't help but envision Cary Grant and his delightful expressions throughout. All in all an enjoyable romp through the trials and tribulations (and mostly trials) of tr ...more

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Sep 08, 2017 Jess Lane rated it really liked it

Shelves: 26-book-challenge

I will never build a house. I haven't seen the movies that are based on this book so this was a fresh read for me. I enjoyed it. I wouldn't say it's laugh out loud funny and you really do feel for Mr. Blanding as everyone even his wife seems to be against him. But then at times you look at both him and his wife and are like you are overreacting especially when a cottage was built down then hill from them and they were upset about it hurting the view but it could barely be seen. This is book one ...more

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Aug 24, 2018 Tina rated it liked it · review of another edition

A fun read full of the painful comedy of house-building woes. Written shortly after the end of WW2, the humor reflects a time before social-consciousness extended to social class and women, yet it does not offend, giving equal time to the foibles of all sorts of people and professions.

I would certainly have a hard time deciding whether this is a good book to read before embarking on home ownership, or whether it might be sufficient to make any prospective homeowners to resign themselves happily ...more

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About Eric Hodgins

Eric Hodgins

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Born 1899, Eric Francis Hodgins was the American author of the popular Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1946). Hodgins served as editor in chief of The Youth Companion, associate editor of Redbook, and then as associate editor of Fortune magazine. He became publisher of Fortune in 1937, and a vice president of Time Inc. in 1938. He quit Time Inc. in 1946 to write full-time.

His novels also inc ...more