Teenreads.com -- FULL SERVICE by Will Weaver

FULL SERVICE
Will Weaver
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fiction
Hardcover: 0374324859
Paperback: 9780374400224
240 pages

In the summer of 1965, shy Paul Sutton, at the urging of his mother, takes a job at the local Shell gas station in the tourist town of Hawk Bend, Minnesota. Paul is a bit apprehensive about his new summer occupation, but nonetheless leaves the shadow of his family's religious farming community and goes to "meet the public." Paul's stint as a full-service gas attendant quickly becomes anything but a simple summer job.

First, there's Kirk, the angry gas station manager whose frequent "service calls" and narrow-minded opinions soon get him in more trouble than he can handle. Then there's Harry, a kind, older gentlemen who's still trying to escape his gangster past. And beautiful Peggy, whose torrid love triangle between her controlling boyfriend Stephen and dark-haired Dale --- Peggy's on-the-side lover who's headed for Vietnam --- snags Paul into its tangled web.

Along with the great expectations of his community's fundamentalist ministers, the family of hippies visiting Hawk Bend on their way to San Francisco, and the various tourists who pass through Shell Station, Paul finds himself dealing with the prospect of a new independent life or continuing to lead the odd quiet farm life in which he grew up.

FULL SERVICE is about a young man's rite of passage as the world he lives in is undergoing its tumultuous own coming of age. It's a strangely compelling, nostalgic novel that may make readers notice how much the world has changed and how they themselves may have changed as well.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Sawtelle (SdarksideG@aol.com)

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