Zermatt

Calvin Becker Trilogy #2

by Frank Schaeffer

Calvin Becker is back in a timeless story about the volcanic sexual curiosity of a fourteen-year-old boy born into 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 in the attic). It is 1966, and Ralph and Elsa Becker, Reformed Presbyterian missionaries from Kansas, are stationed in Switzerland, and on a modest ski vacation with their three children: tyrannical eighteen-year-old Janet, 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." But at the Hotel Riffelberg, high above Zermatt, Calvin falls into the hands of a waitress who, while bringing him his breakfast each morning, serially initiates him into ecstasies he can barely comprehend. The resulting family crisis triggers a larger crisis of faith in his fundamentalist father, leading to a climax, which rips Calvin out of his childhood. With echoes of Irving and Roth and its own uniquely human voice, Zermatt is a coming-of-age gem.

Genres: Fiction, Religion, Humor

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books. Frank is a survivor of both polio and an evangelical/fundamentalist childhood, an acclaimed writer who overcame severe dyslexia, a home-schooled and self-taught documentary movie director, a feature film director of four low budget Hollywood features Frank has described as “pretty terrible.” He is also an acclaimed author of both fiction and nonfiction and an artist with a loyal following of international collectors who own many of his oil paintings. Frank has been a frequent guest on the Rachel Maddow Show on NBC, has appeared on Oprah, been interviewed by Terri Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air and appeared on the Today Show, BBC News and many other media outlets. He is a much sought after speaker and has lectured at a wide range of venues from Harvard’s Kennedy School to the Hammer Museum/UCLA, Princeton University, Riverside Church Cathedral, DePaul University and the Kansas City Public Library.

Reviews

[Theo Logos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Zermatt is the second installment in the coming of age trilogy of young Calvin Becker. Like its predecessor, Portofino, its title comes from the location where Calvin's family of Fundamentalist missionaries vacation, and these titles telegraph vital information about content. Portofino was a charming, sun drenched novel that followed Calvin and his peculiar family on their summer vacation in Italy. Zermatt is a far darker novel which takes place in the ominous shadow of the Matterhorn during a winter ski trip.

This series appeals to me because I recognize the twisted, Fundamentalist world that flummoxes Calvin's journey through puberty. I was the child of a fundamentalist minister. I was fluent in the stilted, churchy language by which Calvin's family communicates. I recognize the combative world view that imagines ones own small group as a tiny circle of righteous warriors opposed by a vast, evil army of the damned. The snobbery masquerading as piety is as familiar as my mom's cooking. I read these books because in many ways they mirror my own history and experience.

Despite this, Zermatt went oddly wrong for me. The conflict within Calvin's family was too extreme to be believable. The crisis of faith/breakdown/coming to his senses experienced by Calvin's father in such a public and melodramatic way strained my suspension of disbelief. Calvin's mother is a purely Machiavellian manipulator in Zermatt, devoid of any humanizing, softening traits; a cardboard villain. It's just not great writing, and it lost me somewhere in the dark, last third of the book. At one point I was contemplating giving only two stars.

Ultimately, I gave Zermatt three stars because it does still speak to my own past. And, despite its flaws, the author did managed to keep me intrigued from start to finish. (I read the book in a single day.) Just make sure you first read Portofino to fully appreciate it.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where Portofino was funny, Zermatt was just plain scary. A real cautionary tale about the mental illness inherent in fundamentalist religious practices.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

It didn't start out great, but it became incredibly funny about halfway through and ended quite thoughtfully. I recommend these books for anyone who grew up in an evangelical, mission-minded family and is ready to laugh about it and can also handle being a little disturbed. I feel like Frank Schaeffer is sincere. He certainly takes full advantage of the comic possibilities provided by the situations and character types he is dealing with, but the questions raised are left to the reader to sort through, not presented in a heavy-handed or mean-spirited manner. I think different people, and the same people in different stages of their lives, will receive it very differently. Personally, I loved reading about familiar situations that few other people would understand, laughing out loud, and facing important questions about life, religion, and relationships.

[Dan Hyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A humorous coming of age story, about a 14 year old male in a missionary household. The author does a good job of portraying a male going through adolescence.

Apparently this is the middle of a trilogy, but I have not read the other two books.

[Michael Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a non-stop hoot! I am enjoying immensely. Ultimately it is more serious than the first half, as it lures the reader in. As the characters progress, and fill out, they seem less cartoonish. And some of the antics, and their consequences come back to hit home.
I know it's part of a series, and am now anxious to get to the others..

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When the Calvinist missionary Becker family goes on a ski vacation, the hotel waitress/barmaid attempts to seduce 14-year-old Calvin--so he thinks it's the Best! Vacation! Ever! until he is nearly caught. Despite his, hm, partial cover-up, the incident puts stress on his parents' marriage. As a result his father has a sort of nervous breakdown and starts acting like a nearly-normal person, the waitress accepts Jesus as her personal savior, and Calvin must do some unlikely truth-telling to save his parents' marriage and livelihood.

I like bawdy humor and religious humor and this story has a great deal of both. As a survival mechanism Calvin has learned how to manipulate his mother through telling her what she wants to hear, but also through apparently-innocent questions about her religion and attitudes (which contributes to much of the humor). When he is caught fondling his sister's bra on the clothesline, he leads his mother--who has no healthy boundaries but many euphemisms when it comes to talking about sex--through a silly sequence of theological and sexual questions ("I just wanted to ask about predestination and bras") that distract her from punishing him for this relatively innocent incident.

Despite the humor, which had me laughing out loud for much of the book, the end of this book becomes kind of horrifying, as the mother descends from her boundary-free religious mania into some kind of deeper megalomaniac insanity and spiritual abuse, compared to which his father's occasional physical abuse seems relatively benign. It certainly makes one question where the line is between believing you are doing the will of God and playing God. Despite the somewhat chilling ending, this book is my favorite of the trilogy and has already stood up to re-reading.

[Sam Stephens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoo, it's hard to recommend this one as it's told through the unflinchingly honest perspective of a 14 yr old who is currently in the violent throes of puberty and sexuality. So it's awkward to say the least. I read it based on recommendation of a friend and thinking he'd have a similar perspective as his father Francis Schaeffer, a brilliant mind and personal hero. Turns out, he doesn't. As it chronicles young Calvin's life, Schaeffer starts to feel like he's exaggerating his autobiography. If you ever wondered what David Sedaris would sound like had he been raised by missionaries, this book gives you a good look.

[Noreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of an extremely fundamental missionary family on one of their traditional family vacations is like reading about a train wreck - you can't look away! I was disappointed in the ending but its probably more truthful then my fairy tale version would have been. It's a sad commentary on how religion can cloud and distort the Biblical teachings of Christ that salvation comes from faith and not the from the pitiful attempts we make to be 'good.'

[Mike Barker · Rating 3 out of 5]

If Portofino was G-rated, this was definitely PG. Calvin's relationship with the maid was funnily described if surprisingly vivid. Too, this book went deeper into the religiosity of the parents, and the pathology of their particular (made-up) brand of religious zealotry and how that plays out in their marriage and parenting. Given those deepening plot-lines, I am intrigued to see where Saving Grandma goes.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good read, but the ending was weak. I felt the characters weren't cohesive to the end. To me, the mother basically changed personalities toward the end of the book. Also there was some raw sex stuff that was a bit much for me. It wasn't horrible stuff, just not realistic. But then again, who am I? Maybe that kind of sex happens all the time and I'm the only one not privy to it. :-)

[Kathleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The sequel to Portofino, it had a weak ending and seemed to go now where after the middle of the book. Still, as someone who was raised in a fundamentalist family, the language is a too familiar. I empathized with Calvin, all the lying and pretending, just to lead a normal life.

[Doris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sex, sin and salvation all contribute to the pubescent awakening of our young narrator, Calvin Becker, on the ski slopes of Zermatt. A sometimes fun, sometimes sad look at this vacationing fundamentalist missionary family, last seen in 'Portofino', the first of this rather entertaining trilogy.

[Bobby Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laugh out loud funny in parts, too tragic for words in others... I have no idea how Frank Schaeffer turned out sane, because his family was anything but. If you grew up in a Fundamentalist household, you'll recognize an awful lot in this story.

[Penelope Polins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book, set in surroundings that are so familiar to me. There were places that I laughed out loud and others where I despaired for these people up at the Riffelhaus at night, in total isolation from the merry village 1,000 metres below them.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like this one the least of the Portofino trilogy. See my review for Portofino.

[Keri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't find the sequel as fun and entertaining as Portofino

[Karyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was okay. It was fun to revisit Calvin and his family, but it is not the masterpiece that Portofino is.

[Jeff Trueman]

Cracked...me...UP!!! Love this trilogy of works!

[Chris]

The last in the Calvin Becker trilogy - really a funny series. Great characters and a hilarious commentary on born-again Christians.