Bluebird Canyon

by Dan McCall

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000ILRRY8
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Congdon & Weed, Inc.
• Length: 373 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Bluebird Canyon - A West Coast Daydream

I read this book when it was first published in 1983, and have read it many, many times since. It's very much a Southern California novel. The action takes place in Orange County (Newport Beach) and the Inland Empire (Coachella Valley). The story revolves the Hookers, a rich OC family. J.O., the patriarch, is a world famous architect, his wife Leela is a society matron, and their handsome son Rex is the producer/star of a long-running soap opera. Rex has an ex-wife, a young son, a girlfriend, and is slowly losing his mind. Into this picture steps Trip, our narrator. He's a policeman, and Rex's best friend from high school. The novel is told in the first person from his perspective. As the family slowly unravels, Trip becomes more and more responsible for all of them. It's funny; this is probably supposed to be a quickie novel to be read on an airplane or long car ride, but Dan McCall has much to say here about the importance of family and the meaning of friendship. The book is funny, and serious, and sad. The characters are engaging and the dialogue is catchy. There's lots of jokes and wordplay here too. (My favorite: a man in a lion suit at an amusement park tells Rex, "I'd really like to go home with you, but after all, I have my pride.") The complexity of the novel shouldn't be surprising, though. Dan McCall was a professor of English at Cornell University for many years and is known for his scholarship on the works of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. This is a great book. If ever you run across a copy, snatch it up and read it from cover to cover. As soon as you finish you'll want to read it again.

A satisfying read

I read this book years ago when a friend who lives in Modjeska Canyon loaned it to me. I still remember a riddle from the book: what are the two words in the English language that contain all five vowels in order (a-e-i-o-u)? I'm not going to tell you! You have to read the book to find out! Warm, funny, involving, and respectful...that's my memory of this good book.

Thinking person's beach book

I found this book at a thrift shop and was surprised I hadn't heard of it before. It's a "beach book," but a GOOD one. The premise isn't the same old thing -- it's told from the perspective of a policeman (Trip) in a beautiful area of California who grew up there knowing a rich family. The scion of the rich family, Rex, is a soap opera star who is a good guy but has hashed up his life in various ways. Trip gets further and further drawn in to Rex's life, having more common sense but not being immune from envy over Rex's good looks and the things that come to him easily. It made me think of my mother's cautions to me as a child -- don't envy other people whose lives look perfect, because you just don't know what's going on inside their lives. That's a worthy thing to remind ourselves of as adults, isn't it? And this is a crisply written, suspenseful reminder.