Best to Laugh: A Novel

Synopsis

No one steps up to life&’s banquet, holds out her tray, and orders, &“Grief, please!&” But as a child, Candy Pekkala was served a heaping helping of it. Every buffet line has a dessert section, however, and when a cousin calls with a Hollywood apartment to sublet, it seems as though Candy is finally offered something sweet. It&’s good-bye to Minnesota and hello to California, where a girl who has always lived by her wits has a real chance of making a living with them. With that, the irrepressible Lorna Landvik launches her latest irresistible character onto the world stage—or at least onto the dimly lit small stage where stand-up comedy gets its start.Herself a comic performer, Landvik taps her own adventurous past and Minnesota roots to conjure Candy&’s life in this strange new Technicolor home. Her fellow tenants at Peyton Hall include a female bodybuilder, a ruined nightclub impresario, and a well-connected Romanian fortune-teller. There are game show appearances and temp jobs at a record company and an establishment suspiciously like the Playboy Mansion, and of course the alluring but not always welcoming stage of stand-up comedy. As she hones her act, Candy is tested by humiliation, hecklers, and the inherent sexism that insists &“chicks aren&’t funny.&”Written with the light touch and quiet wisdom that have made her works so popular, this is classic Lorna Landvik—sometimes so funny, you&’ll cry; sometimes so sad, you might as well laugh; and always impossible to put down.

Copyright:

2014

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781452943299

Related ISBNs:

9780816694532

Publisher:

University of Minnesota Press

Date of Addition:

03/18/25

Copyrighted By:

Lorna Landvik

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Literature and Fiction

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.