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Anyone else read these books? I love 'em. For those not in the know, the trilogy is composed of Portofino, Zermatt and Saving Grandma by Frank Schaeffer. As for what the books are about, my dad once asked, and I answered, "they're the fictional memoirs of a teenage boy growing up with his hard-core Calvinist, fundamentalist missionary family." Dad thought about it a moment, shook his head and said, "Poor bastard." That's a pretty good summary.
To elaborate, though, the books are semi-autobiographical. The author is the son of a fairly prominent protestant theologian, Francis Schaeffer, and did grow up in a European mission back in the sixties. This poor kid wants so desperately to be normal, and he tries to bluff his way through with people he meets, but he can never escape his family. He's been raised in a manner that borders on abusive (his parents were so preoccupied with their calling that they never really taught him how to read, for example). The stories are alternately profound, poignant and hysterically funny.
My favorite character is Calvin's mother, Elsa. She's...hard to describe. If you've ever seen American Beauty, Annette Bening's character in that is about as close to Elsa as any, though still not very close. She's like a cross between June Cleaver and some ancient, terrible Mother Superior from a Catholic school somewhere, except she hates and fears nuns and all other Godless Roman Catholic Papist Atheists. It's fascinating to watch her use her passive-aggressive prayers, emotional extortion and subtle torture to control everyone in the family, while at the same time looking quite vulnerable and pitiable.
I'm not describing the books very well at all, though. I recommend them for everyone, believers and nonbelievers alike. Unless you're a believer in hardcore Calvinist predestination rapture-happy whatever, like the family in the book, because you'd feel terribly insulted. But I don't think there are many of those on Poly.
To elaborate, though, the books are semi-autobiographical. The author is the son of a fairly prominent protestant theologian, Francis Schaeffer, and did grow up in a European mission back in the sixties. This poor kid wants so desperately to be normal, and he tries to bluff his way through with people he meets, but he can never escape his family. He's been raised in a manner that borders on abusive (his parents were so preoccupied with their calling that they never really taught him how to read, for example). The stories are alternately profound, poignant and hysterically funny.
My favorite character is Calvin's mother, Elsa. She's...hard to describe. If you've ever seen American Beauty, Annette Bening's character in that is about as close to Elsa as any, though still not very close. She's like a cross between June Cleaver and some ancient, terrible Mother Superior from a Catholic school somewhere, except she hates and fears nuns and all other Godless Roman Catholic Papist Atheists. It's fascinating to watch her use her passive-aggressive prayers, emotional extortion and subtle torture to control everyone in the family, while at the same time looking quite vulnerable and pitiable.
I'm not describing the books very well at all, though. I recommend them for everyone, believers and nonbelievers alike. Unless you're a believer in hardcore Calvinist predestination rapture-happy whatever, like the family in the book, because you'd feel terribly insulted. But I don't think there are many of those on Poly.