Description
In the sequel to his acclaimed novel Portofino, Frank Schaeffer's hilarious and ultimately moving narrator, Calvin Becker, returns in a coming-of-age story that takes readers even deeper into the heart of his tortured, fundamentalist family.
It is 1966 and Ralph and Elsa Becker, Reformed Presbyterian missionaries from Kansas stationed in Switzerland, have embarked on their annual, modest ski vacation to Zermatt. The counterpart to their annual, modest beach vacation to Portofino, this is a much anticipated chance to spend time around "normal people" for their three children: the sadistic eighteen-year-old Janet, the angelic Rachael, and our narrator, the irrepressible Calvin, who puzzles over his sisters' bras, as they hang on a line hidden away "so that I could not get a good look unless I ducked under the sheets to the feminine heart of the laundry maze."
Calvin is fourteen, torn between his naturally volcanic sexual curiosity and a fundamentalist family so strict that he has never seen a movie, watched television or danced (and has to hide his five copies of Mad magazine-contraband slipped to him by the son of a visiting pastor-in the attic).
But at the Hotel Riffelberg, a supposed safe haven from the sinners listening to jazz far below in Zermatt, Calvin nevertheless falls into the hands of Eva, the young waitress, who, after bringing him his breakfast each morning, begins Calvin's initiation into ecstasies he can barely comprehend. Even so, it is only after his mother catches him in the act-or so she thinks that Calvin's real education begins: You have to keep your head in these sorts of circumstances. There is no margin for error when you are discovered in a hotel room with your pajamas soaked with telltale stains, a broken picture behind the bed and your mother and father standing over you, looking at you while your mother's hands are full of women's undergarments, including an extra large lacy white bra smelling of unfortunate Europeans.
"Where did these come from, Calvin?" yelped Mom.
The resulting family meltdown triggers an explosive crisis of faith in his father and an alarming schism in the Becker family, building to a climax destined to push Calvin's childhood into the past. With a unique voice that conveys both the disconcerting sophistication and absolute innocence of Calvin Dort Becker, Zermatt is a coming-of-age gem.
ISBN:9780786712595
