Zermatt Book

At the time I read Zermatt I was deep in the thrall of Frank Schaeffer's writing. I very much enjoyed this book and, well, now I have some reservations. Not enough to withhold my recommendation but...

MOST IMPORTANT:
Zermatt is fiction. Yes all of the Calvin Trilogy draws heavily on the real childhood of author Frank Schaeffer, but it is FICTION. The best way to read the trilogy is to pretend you never heard of the writer and know nothing about his personal life. Schaeffer's technique is to place his characters under the utmost stress and follow what happens. As such his plots can include some contrivances but mostly his characters follow a logic particular to the fictional person.

About the story:
Calvin is 14, and the Baker family is on their winter vacation to the lesser expensive Swiss resort town of Zermatt. The three Baker siblings are in an ongoing battle to secure their individual standing in the family pecking order. His two sisters find that they can usually depend on Calvin to be a safe target. Father is beginning to understand that too many women can take the "man" out of the boy. Calvin mean time has learned how to redirect his mother's attention from his typical teenage obsession with sex and general 14 year old male clumsiness. The family remains so tied to its fundamental religious habits that only Calvin seems to understand how many ways the family hobbles itself. Somehow these people deserve each other and yet it seems cruel to judge them harshly. In other words, this is a close knit family. The kids pull in their various direction but they are a unit.

That is until a too sexually charged encounter, almost fully exposed pushes the family into crisis. The strains outlined in Portofino are exacerbated until the unit fractures.

There are several aspects of all this that , many month later have me perplexed as to how to best explain my continued appreciation of this book and the Calvin Becker Trilogy. Schaefer can write hysterically funny passages. He can write almost equally explosive human drama. In Zermatt more than the Portofino and Saving Grandma, each family member achieves some kind of life on their own terms.

The contrivances I never found off putting but do not read well on a page. Specific events as written were very funny, but will not sound funny in a review. Ultimately, I liked the world that Schaeffer shares with us. I accept that he is writing fiction and not thinly disguised Freudian therapy for himself. I can see the love and affection he has for the Becker Family. In Zermatt he will demand more of the family members and perhaps too much for some readers. I wanted more comedy and less drama. Then again I appreciated his determination to drive the Beckers to the edge. And so my feelings for this book are mixed.