From Publishers Weekly Holm (Coming Home Crazy) is living once again in the small town of Minneota， Minn.， where he grew up， and he is feeling sentimental about it. He is a smart writer and has some interesting things to say about sense of place， but there is an underlying softness in his attitude towards his hometown that makes these essays treacly， and no amount of literary references can sharpen them. "God knows I tried to escape， to do the right American thing， making a middle-class life in a gentler， lovelier， more urbane place， some better home for an eccentric intellectual misfit，" he insists in an essay that rambles from the cost of living in Minneota to the meaning of the town's name ("much water" in Dakota) to reviewer misprints of the title of his first book， but one gets the feeling he never tried all that hard. The history of the town is much less interesting than the characters that populated it in Holm's childhood， and he devotes much of the book to biography of these characters， many of them originally from Iceland. An essay on the way that children are taught to mistrust strangers today segues into a tribute to the elderly woman who often baby-sat for him; an examination of poverty disintegrates into admiration for how his parents forced him to be kind to Sara Kline， "a Minneota 'bag lady，' years before that term became fashionable." It's not that this isn't heartwarming， it's just that it is familiar and sometimes suffers from smugness. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information， Inc. From Library Journal As a youth， Holm defined failure as dying in his hometown of Minneota， Minnesota. He left to see the world， and when he returned?almost 40， broke， unemployed， divorced， unpublished， and his immediate family dead?home looked better to him. He began to write about the people who were most important to him in his childhood， the old Icelandic immigrants who were his relatives and neighbors in a tiny town on the western edge of Minnesota. In this memoir， we meet them all， including Pauline Bardal， a spinster without formal education who introduced the author to music and the piano， and Virgil Voltaire Gislason， a dandy and bon vivant who delighted in serving proper martinis， even during Prohibition. A fine writer with a wry， self-deprecating style， Holm has done what many authors aspire to do: make the dead live again. In doing so， he has produced a memoir that considers the question of what constitutes success in a culture infused with the immigrant desire to rise in the New World. Highly recommended for public libraries.?Caroline A. Mitchell， Washington， D.C.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information， Inc. See all Editorial Reviews