Vacationland

by Christopher Corbett

Chick Devine, bringer of good cheer, prognosticator, pundit, and promoter, and his band of merrymakers provide entertainment for the citizens of Maine with such diversions as Homarus Americanus, the scourge of Eggemoggin Reach, also known as Ernie the hundred-pound lobster

174 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1986

Reviews

[Lori]

I only finished this book because it was relatively short and a "light read" - so it only wasted @3 hours of my life.

In purporting to portray characters in small-town Maine Corbett commits several fatal mistakes. He draws characters without characterization. His writing does little to persuade the reader that his small-town Maine rubes and grifters are not small-town Pennsylvania rubes and grifters, small-town Nebraska rubes and grifters, or small-town California rubes and grifters. And most damningly, he is snarky without being remotely funny, which gives the entire novel a mean-spirited feel. If you want to lose yourself in a tale of small-town Maine in all its quirkiness, steely independent pride, social divisions, and sometime provincialism and poverty, much better to go with something from the pen of John Irving, Carolyn Chute or Cathie Pelletier.