Pinch Me I Must Be Dreaming - Hardcover

Swarthout, Glendon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312113838 ISBN 13: 9780312113834

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1994

Synopsis

"To ask her to marry him and to be sure she said yes, Don Chambers took Jenny Staley for a ride in a hot air balloon.
How was Don to know that:
One, Max the pilot talked all the time. Two, the basket was small...and crammed with propane gas tanks and instruments and Max. Three, when Max pulled a handle overhead and ignited the dual burners, Don and Jenny couldn't hear themselves think, much less converse...
Don put his arm around Jenny's waist and spoke in her ear. 'Jenny, I love you.' She couldn't hear.
Max burned. Don shouted."
Anyone with less persistence would have seen an omen in the disastrous ending of this $250-an-hour proposal. But Don is dogged and in love. When Jenny says she can't leave her ninety-one-year-old rifle-toting granny and her twentysomething daughter, Don invites them all to move into his condo. But Grandma Windy won't budge.
Both the lovers are middle-aged, modern divorced adults; there is no reason they cannot consummate their passion. They are on the verge of just that when the phone call comes from Don's octogenarian father. He has broken his hip and Don must transport him from Michigan to Don's Arizona home.
When eventually the stingy old codger moves out and Don and Jenny are once more alone, who should arrive but Don's son Ron, a recent college dropout with a pet rabbit and a tank of oxygen to which he turns when life becomes too stressful, as it so often does.
Complications multiply, and through it all the hapless pair of lovers stumble along, their eyes on a simple goal - marriage and release from the demands of being the filling in a generational sandwich of older parents and younger children. Whatever transpires in the true-to-life drama spiced with the author's dry wit, the journey is a wonderfully enjoyable one for the reader.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Episodes straight out of a TV sitcom characterize this banal romantic comedy by the late (1918-1992) Swarthout (Where the Boys Are). Don Chambers and Jenny Staley, both divorced, are ready to marry one another-but these Scottsdale, Ariz., realtors have no inkling of the impending events that will turn their romance into farce and give new meaning to the term "extended family." Jenny's feisty 91-year-old grandmother takes an instant dislike to Don and refuses to decamp Jenny's condo for a nursing home. Meanwhile, Don's father, Harry, sliding perceptibly into senility, decides to live with Don, while Don's son, Ron, drops out of college and returns home with a trained rabbit at his side; further complications arise when Ron falls for Jenny's 18-year-old daughter. Though striving for a light effect, Swarthout weaves only a sad tangle of humorless events. Harry, irascible and mean, plows into a barber shop;, Granny waves a shotgun at Don; and assorted ailments of the elderly, including diabetes and heart disease, fail to generate a smile. Will Don and Jenny ever wed? After this torturous and strained series of escapades, it's hard to care.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Forty-two-year-old Don Chambers and his betrothed, 38-year-old Jenny Staley, are beginning to think they might never get married. Life has gotten in the way--first, in the form of Jenny's 91-year-old grandmother, Windy Coon, and next, in the form of Don's 83-year-old father, Harry. To top it off, their teenage children from previous marriages have fallen in love with each other, and the daughter is pregnant (which means their children are having sex, even though Don and Jenny haven't quite gotten around to it). Their engagement from hell consists of medicines, blasting television sets, raging hormones, pitiful real estate sales, and impending bankruptcy. And every time they think it can't get any worse, of course it does. Sounds depressing, but the late Swarthout's playful writing style and go-with-the-flow philosophy make this novel a quick and delicious read. Its humor heals us while its frankness about old age, death, money, and life's complications wakes us up. Kathryn Broderick

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0312113838
• ISBN 13: 9780312113834
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 232