Wishin' and Hopin': A Christmas Story by Wally Lamb

From the Publisher

It's 1964 and ten-year-old Felix is sure of a few things: the birds and the bees are puzzling, television is magical, and this is one Christmas he'll never forget.

LBJ and Lady Bird are in the White House, Meet the Beatles is on everyone's turntable, and Felix Funicello (distant cousin of the iconic Annette!) is doing his best to navigate fifth grade-easier said than done when scary movies still give you nightmares and you bear a striking resemblance to a certain adorable cartoon boy.

Back in his beloved fictional town of Three Rivers, Connecticut, with a new cast of endearing characters, Wally Lamb takes his readers straight into the halls of St. Aloysius Gonzaga Parochial School-where Mother Filomina's word is law and goody-two-shoes Rosalie Twerski is sure to be minding everyone's business. But grammar and arithmetic move to the back burner this holiday season with the sudden arrivals of substitute teacher Madame Frechette, straight from Québec, and feisty Russian student Zhenya Kabakova. While Felix learns the meaning of French kissing, cultural misunderstanding, and tableaux vivants, Wishin' and Hopin' barrels toward one outrageous Christmas.

From the Funicello family's bus-station lunch counter to the elementary school playground (with an uproarious stop at the Pillsbury Bake-Off), Wishin' and Hopin' is a vivid slice of 1960s life, a wise and witty holiday tale that celebrates where we've been-and how far we've come.

The Washington Post - Kristi Lanier

Narrator Felix Funicello calls Wishin' and Hopin' his "act of contrition" for schoolboy transgressions. But in the hands of Wally Lamb, what emerges isn't an apology but a celebration of life—flawed, goofy, wonderful life…Felix makes a hilarious guide through a story that whirs right along.

Library Journal

In this charming departure for Lamb (The Hour I First Believed), feisty fifth grader Felix Funicello (yes, distant cousin to Annette) anticipates Christmas. It's 1964 in blue-collar Connecticut, and Felix worries that he's caused Sister Dymphna's mental breakdown. When the school's Christmas pageant rolls around, the school brownnoser and the new Russian girl duke it out over who gets to play Mary. Full of pop-culture references of the day (the Beatles, for example, as well as the Queen Mouseketeer), this will have broad appeal.

Kirkus Reviews

Lightweight holiday fare in the entirely predictable subgenre of What Else Can Go Wrong at the Christmas Pageant?Lamb (The Hour I First Believed, 2008, etc.) takes half the novel just to get around to Yuletide. Up until that time, he lays sometimes laborious, sometimes lighthearted groundwork at the Aloysius Gonzaga Parochial School of New London, Conn., in the fall of 1964. It seems that Sister Dymphna has had a serious emotional meltdown in front of her class, necessitating the arrival of fearsome but charismatic Madame Marguerite Frechette, a Quebecoise whose gifts include directing plays-or in this case a set of tableaux vivants for the school's Christmas production. Fifth-grader Felix Funicello is both narrator and imp of the perverse. And yes, his family is related to the renowned Annette Funicello, whose posters adorn the walls at the bus-depot lunch counter Felix's father runs. (At one point the boy has to confess to a priest that he French-kissed the sexy poster of Annette in her How to Stuff a Wild Bikini phase.) Bad luck stalks Felix like an obstinate shadow, especially as three big events are beginning to intersect in his life: the aforementioned Christmas program, his mother's appearance as a finalist in the Pillsbury Bake-Off (her recipe: Shepherd's Pie Italiano) and Felix's TV debut on The Ranger Andy Show. Readers obviously collude in the deal, for they know that nothing good will happen on any of these fronts. Sure enough, the pageant performers embarrass themselves and their parents with inappropriate off-the-cuff witticisms; Ma gets the trots during her appearance on Art Linkletter's show (the shepherd's pie burns); and Felix tells Ranger Andy an off-color joke that ofcourse is carried live on local networks. Our narrator has two foils here: the egregiously obnoxious Rosalie Twerski (aka "Turdski"), who desperately wants the part of Mary in the pageant, and the exotic Zhenya Kabakova, newly arrived from Russia and suspected (by Rosalie) of being a communist. Flimsy and barely entertaining.

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