Saving Grandma (Calvin Becker Trilogy)

by Frank Schaeffer

Book Overview

Calvin Becker's family are good Bible-believing missionaries; it's their duty to spread the Word to everyone they meet. But now they face their greatest spiritual challenge right in their own home:... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0425157768
• Release Date: August 1997
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.9" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A Sweet Comming Of Age Story Set In The Alps

I started reading Schaeffer with his funny and touching Portofino. I was sure he could not top that book. He did! Saving Grandma is the best thing since Huck Fin, no kidding Andre Dubus (House of Sand and Fog) calls Shaeffer "The new American Twain" and he is not exagerating. Saving Grandma cuts to the heart of what it meansd to grow up. It is also the best book I've ever read about growing up ion a religious houshold. Maybe this is the perfect novel about being young! My book club rated this book as the favorite of the year.

Perfect follow up to Portofino

If you've read Portofino, you've just got to read Saving Grandma! But whatever you do, don't read Saving Grandma UNTIL you've read Portofino! Saving Grandma is the the followup to Portofino, so you'll want to know the history. I don't want to give it all away, but I'll say you're in for some seriously funny, crazy, off the wall antics when you read these books! I'll also say, I wish I knew Calvin. He seems like my kind of person! Still wondering if the movie for Portofino is ever going to be released.

Best comming of age novel ever

After I read Frank Schaeffer's first novel, Portofino I hoped there would be more. there is! Saving Grandma. This has got to be the funniest book on growing up in a religious family ever. It happens to be set in an evangelical Protestant family but Saving speaks to everyone. I grew up in a strict Catholic home and can identify with Calvin, (the books hero) perfectly. Saving is also one of the best books I've ever read when it comes to the innere workings of religion in America, albeit the book is set in a Protestant mission in Switzerland. Anyone who wants to come to terms with the religious nature of our country, and have a good honest laugh along the way will want to read this outstanding book. Frank Schaeffer is our new Mark Twain. Both Saving Grandma and Portofino are a wonderful holliday read. Also My womens group read both books back to back last year and we still all say that they were the best books we've done yet. There were women from all backgrounds, Catholic, Jewish and Protestant as well as agnostic in the group of abpout 12 of us. We ALL loved Saving Grandma and laughed so hard we could hardly get through some chapters.

Another smashing book by Frank Schaeffer! Bravo, Bravo!!!

One of my favorite books of all time is Portofino. I read it in 1993, shortly after the book came out, and it is a book that I could read time and time again, so likeable is Calvin Becker, so alive the sights and smells of Portofino, and so funny and bittersweet it's insights. So it was with great anticipation that I read "Saving Grandma", Schaeffer's sequel to Portofino, picking up roughly where the other left off.I was not at all disappointed. While the book fills you with a little more angst, as you suffer along with Calvin waiting to see how it all turns out, the book is as sweet, as funny, as colorful as Portofino. This book proves that you don't have to write a thriller to write a page turner, I devoured the last 150 pages in one sitting where I got up only to go to the bathroom, and took the book along with me, reading as I walked. If you liked Portofino, you'll love Saving Grandma. I suggest reading Portofino first, as the two are very much intertwined.Does anyone know if a follow up book is planned? the ending seemed to suggest it.

An awsome book

I thought this was a very funny book and a good sequel to portifin