Full Service

by Will Weaver

Book Overview

The times they are a-changin' . . . The summer that Paul turns sixteen his mother pushes him to take a job in town instead of just working on the family farm. "You need to meet the public," she says, which is saying a lot for a woman deeply committed to the tightly knit religious community to which they belong. And meet the public Paul does: He meets Kirk, the angry gas station manager; Harry, a reclusive and kindly gangster; and a family of hippies...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374400229
• ISBN13: 9780374400224
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 231 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.4" x 8.2"
• Age Range: 14 to 18 years
• Grade Range: Grade 9 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

Sex & Existentialism For Teens

Full Service's characters feel real. The interactions feel like they matter. There is a plot arc but it doesn't dominate the book - instead the book unfolds a particular summer, a particular lens on how it goes in a small white town and the larger world. This particular lens has a lot to do with sexuality and making sense of the world. There are a couple subtle gay characters but the focus is on heterosexuality - and this is one of the few teen books I've read where the women and girls are just as lusty as the men and boys and aren't made to suffer G-d's wrath for it. This is one of the books where each character is rounded with a virtue and a problem. It reminded me of "Our Town" but less feeling of allegory and more the feeling you could know people like these.

A compelling, nostalgic, coming-of-age novel

In the summer of 1965, shy Paul Sutton, at the urging of his mother, takes a job at the local Shell gas station in the tourist town of Hawk Bend, Minnesota. Paul is a bit apprehensive about his new summer occupation, but nonetheless leaves the shadow of his family's religious farming community and goes to "meet the public." Paul's stint as a full-service gas attendant quickly becomes anything but a simple summer job. First, there's Kirk, the angry gas station manager whose frequent "service calls" and narrow-minded opinions soon get him in more trouble than he can handle. Then there's Harry, a kind, older gentlemen who's still trying to escape his gangster past. And beautiful Peggy, whose torrid love triangle between her controlling boyfriend Stephen and dark-haired Dale --- Peggy's on-the-side lover who's headed for Vietnam --- snags Paul into its tangled web. Along with the great expectations of his community's fundamentalist ministers, the family of hippies visiting Hawk Bend on their way to San Francisco, and the various tourists who pass through Shell Station, Paul finds himself dealing with the prospect of a new independent life or continuing to lead the odd quiet farm life in which he grew up. FULL SERVICE is about a young man's rite of passage as the world he lives in is undergoing its tumultuous own coming of age. It's a strangely compelling, nostalgic novel that may make readers notice how much the world has changed and how they themselves may have changed as well. --- Reviewed by Sarah Sawtelle ([...])

Richie's Picks: FULL SERVICE

" 'No, no, no,' she said impatiently, wiping her hands and turning down her radio, 'a real summer job--full-time. One where you could meet the public.' "I glanced quickly through the screen door. 'What about Father?' " 'I'll talk with him.' "I shrugged. 'Yeah, well, what about the others?' " 'For once let's not worry about the others,' she said. She turned back to her dishes, and her hands again moved into the soapy water as quick as trout among stones. " 'The others' takes some explaining. We were a Midwestern family long on religion. Not Lutheran, but sort of. Not Mennonite, but kind of. Not Amish, but a little bit. Not Quaker, but a good part. It was a Christian nondenominational faith, a phrase mystifying to my few school friends who were not in it ('Come on, Sutton, how can a church have no name?'). Farmwork was communal. My family shared the larger machinery--baler, grain combine, corn picker, silo-filling equipment--with several other families in the Faith. Planting, haying, threshing, silo filling, corn picking were done on an orderly circuit: VandenEides, Grundlags, Sorheims, Suttons (that was us), and so on. Unlike the Mennonites in Canada or the Amish in central Minnesota, each family owned its own farm, but the focus was on shared work, worship, and fitting in with the others." It's 1965, and Paul Sutton has spent his first nearly-sixteen years pretty-well sheltered by life on the farm, and living among those families of the Faith. Tumultuous events elsewhere--the Civil Rights Movement, the War--seem like they're taking place in another world as heard through Paul's mom's little transistor radio. But Paul's life is about to get shaken up in a big way thanks to one of his mom's infamous "plans": " 'All right. I'm listening,' my father said, though he really wasn't. " 'First, Paul finds a job--a real job, one where he can meet the public--and then we hire someone to take up the slack here at home,' she said. "My father reached for the bread He began to butter a piece. The silence went on. Finally he said, 'First, I don't know that Paul necessarily wants to work in town. Second, who could we find to take his place? There are no hired men anymore. But third, none of it really matters, because there aren't any jobs in Hawk Bend for farm kids. Town kids have them all.' "There was silence. I looked down at my food. " 'It must be nice to be right all the time,' my mother said. "I sucked in a breath and held it." "Well, I try my best To be just like I am, But everybody wants you To be just like them." --Minnesota native, Bob Dylan (1965), "Maggie's Farm" Thirty or forty pages into reading FULL SERVICE, I found myself thinking back to such wonderful children's books as BECAUSE OF WINN-DIXIE, A YEAR DOWN YONDER, and THE CANNING SEASON. These thoughts did not spring from any belief that Will Weaver's new book is the appropriate next read for the elementary school fans of those award-winning titles. In fact, FULL SERVICE is a real sex,