Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ella's Lunch Launch - Hardcover

Kraft, Eric

3.77

65 ratings by Goodreads

9780312288044: Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ella's Lunch Launch

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312288042 ISBN 13: 9780312288044

Publisher: Picador, 2002

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“Is there a more beguiling writer today than Eric Kraft?” —Publishers Weekly

Ella Leroy dreams of escaping the dreary routine of her 1950s wife-and-mom life. Without telling her husband, she enlists her son Peter and his locally-notorious girlfriend Patti in a scheme: to buy a run-down clamboatand re-invent it as an elegant cruising vessel for summer people in the beach town of Babbington, Long Island.But after the Arcinella is purchased, Peter discovers thatit is slowly sinking. Each night he sneaks from his home to the harborfront of Bolotomy Bay, where he pumps the boat dry, inflating his mother’s hopes a bit longer.

Inflating a Dog offers proof of the genius of an author whose work Newsweek has called “the literary equivalent of Fred Astaire dancing: great art that looks like fun.”

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About the Author:

Eric Kraft lives in New York with his wife, Madeline.

From Publishers Weekly:

Kraft's eighth installment (after Leaving Small's Hotel) in the winsome series featuring the charming Peter Leroy is a cheeky, amusing look at the nature of the entrepreneurial dream. Narrated by the now adult Peter, the story takes place during his adolescence, as his mother, Ella, gets yet another idea in an endless string of outlandish business schemes. This time her fantasy is to establish a cruise line for the bay near their hometown of Babbington, Del. Despite her husband's smirking disapproval, she buys a clam boat and, with the help of Peter and his sexy girlfriend, Patti, begins to fix it up. The cruise line makes a splash in the community when Peter hits a channel marker during their elegant maiden voyage, dumping the mayor's wife in the bay. Their venture struggles after their first outing, until they get the idea to go downscale and paint the boat in garish tropical colors, a move that makes them a wild local hit. The rags-to-riches plot is a bit on the generic side, but Kraft turns the concept up a notch in the preface, in which Peter Leroy reveals that the happy ending is one he created to compensate for his mother's endless real life failures, a gambit that allows room for plenty of tongue-in-cheek games with the reality-versus-fantasy theme. The book has some slow moments during the rather ordinary coming-of-age narrative in the early going, but once Kraft begins to work his clever conceit, this novel emerges as another memorable installment in his innovative series. East Coast author tour.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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