Review: The Lager Queen of Minnesota

The Lager Queen of Minnesota by J. Ryan Stradal
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The family divides, then reunites a generation later. I read the generations plot in "Hello Beautiful" and didn't care for it. I read it in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" and thought that one was done the best - still only mildly liked it. There is absolutely no reason I should have liked this book - yet I did.

A tribute to beer, and to family. A (mild) rebuke of capitalism. A tip of the hat to old lady ingenuity. The story skips around a lot, swinging from the present to the past and back again - I don't care for this device, but it's here to stay whether I like it or not. It was difficult for at least half the book to see where it wanted to go. I think that the family reunification is a nice fantasy, but I rarely see it outside of fiction - once someone decides that they should have an entire inheritance, the rest of the family rarely bounces back from that - and the relative who does this rarely repents.

It was a nice story.

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