I Want to Buy a Vowel: A Novel of Illegal Alienation
Books / Hardcover
Books › Fiction › Short Stories (single author)
ISBN: 156512118X / Publisher: Algonquin Books, January 1996
Eva Galt, a young minister's child, begins asking hard questions about God and her parents' divorce, while illegal immigrant Alfredo Santayana questions the American dream, and when their paths cross, the result is a satire on small-town media culture run amok
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"My doctor says Mylanta...""Aetna, I'm glad I met ya...""The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup..."What if you were an illegal alien? What if the only way you had to learn to speak English, and learn about America, was by watching TV? Who else would help? Who would tell you how to buy a vowel and get on Wheel of Fortune? Who else would understand?"Kotex understands..."So does John Welter. His third novel, I Want to Buy a Vowel, asks the question "Where do you sleep when you're still dreaming the American Dream?" It's full of the offbeat irony that reviewers cheered in his first two novels and that has won him a cult following among the ranks of the terminally irreverent.John Welter's I Want to Buy a Vowel is a joyous satire of all-American alienation, small-town confusion, and local media gone amok. It tells the story of how a little man looking for a home and a little girl looking for God find big trouble over the course of a long, hot summer. And it answers, once and for all the burning question: "Have you driven a Ford, lately?..."
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