Dairy Queen Days

Coming of age in the small Southern town that bears his family name, Trout Mosley struggles to free himself from the burdens of his mentally disturbed mother and his volatile, obese, Methodist preacher father

A passive protagonist and a bloodless story line make this third novel by Inman (Old Dogs and Children) a sluggish affair. Trout Moseley turns 16 in 1979, just as his mother heads for a mental institution and his father, a preacher, starts wrestling with his beliefs. Father and son retreat to the small Georgia hometown founded, named after and still dominated by their clan. There, Trout discovers a heavy ancestral burden and feels the need to right his family's past wrongs: "He could see that he was a product of a great aching history.... People with mills and trucks and money and power over other people's lives." Unfortunately, he does little besides rehash and bemoan his situation. The family's prominence?"When a Moseley farts, everybody smells it"?isn't convincingly established, and Trout's inherited moral responsibility for a town, even a failing one, doesn't come across as a compelling challenge. Inman's talent for natural dialogue and astute local coloring remains intact here, but it would have been put to better use in a story with a clearer, more dramatic conflict. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Inman (Old Dogs and Children, 1991, etc.) returns with another small-town southern tale, this time focusing on a boy's coming of age during the late '70s. Young Trout Mosely has to move back to Mosely, Georgia, a company town named after his grandfather, when his mother, Irene, suddenly checks into an Atlanta psychiatric facility. Trout's father, Joe Pike, an ex-football player and Methodist preacher, goes off the deep end as well, refurbishing an old Triumph motorcycle and roaring toward Texas, mouthing homely platitudes about the Good Lord's intentions. Joe Pike is forcibly transferred back to the Methodist Church in Mosely, where his sermons astound his sister, matriarch of the dying mill, and amuse an older brother, a whiskey-besotted ex-spy named Phinizy who's come home to die. There's also an embittered, handicapped girl who was run over by a Mosely truck when she was four; she and Trout get jobs at the Dairy Queen, where together they puzzle over the flaws and foibles of their parents and do some growing up. Joe Pike comes in, occasionally, to slurp Blizzards and meditate out loud on the Dairy Queen as the center of the universe. In addition, Inman introduces a canny local sheriff, a gay cousin in Atlanta, and sundry other colorful types, and, sometimes, his blend of humor, sorrow, and down-home charm makes for a touching evocation of growing up. More often, though, Inman seems to have taken on too much and can't satisfactorily work it all out. When Trout heads off on his dad's Triumph to visit his mother, his adventures on the road seem contrived. Worse, his mother, when he finally sees her, has no wisdom to communicate. Worse still, Joe Pike never pulls himself together and, in the end, is just more pathetic than tragic. Inman's likable tone and command of his settings aren't enough to redeem his overloaded story, which winds down into a forced, unsatisfying conclusion. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This well-crafted coming-of-age novel by the author of Old Dogs and Children (LJ 12/90) focuses on 16-year-old Trout Moseley, whose mother is institutionalized and whose motorcycle-riding Methodist preacher father is fleeing from demons of his own. When Trout and his father wind up back in Moseley, Georgia?a town built by the family?Trout himself comes under the burden of the name. This experience leads ultimately to his determination to deliver himself from ancient generational ills. Eventually, Trout indeed delivers himself, but at a terrible expense; he learns that accepting complete and utter loss is itself the vehicle of his deliverance. The characters are wonderfully drawn, and the story is compelling. Recommended for Southern fiction collections.?Susan C. Colegrove, Athens-Clarke Cty. P.L., Ga.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this coming-of-age tale, Trout Moseley and his father, the Reverend Joe Pike Moseley (the ichthyological names go unexplained), move back to Moseley, Georgia, so Pike can rest after cracking up in front of his congregation. The residents of Moseley are divided into two camps: the Moseleys, founders of the town and owners of its main enterprise, a cotton mill, versus everybody else. Innocent Trout plops into this pond, oblivious of local social structure and his family's history. Education comes from eccentric relatives and from Trout's budding puppy love with Keats, the handicapped daughter of a mill worker. Inman's touch is too comedic to cut a Romeo and Juliet from this material; rather, he aims for farcical effects, climaxing when Pike, wanting to build Trout a tennis court, bulldozes the town park, wreaking havoc that causes Trout and Keats to flee to Trout's gay cousin. Naturally they return and split up, being from opposite sides of Moseley's tracks, but this offbeat picture of one summer provokes laughter from beginning to end. Gilbert Taylor