Around the World with Auntie Mame

Oh dear, oh dear, however shall I survive? There is no more Auntie Mame-age available, nor ever shall be, since Dennis is dead these 35 years. The sequel to Auntie Mame appeared in 1958, and was published of the pieces that didn't fit the original frame of "My Most Unforgettable Character." (Remember those? Reader's Digest was such a bland magazine, but those were always fun to read.) This time the frame is Patrick trying to keep his irascible wife Pegeen from killing him for letting Mame have their son for a little vacation...of two and a half years!...by telling her of his own life with Mame. Highly sanitized, of course!

This 2003 edition even restores a snarky little satire on Soviet collectivism that was excised from the original show more book..."Auntie Mame and Mother Russia"...that made me laugh out loud. Well, that's not such a big deal, really, since the entire book made me laugh out loud several dozen times.

How I appreciate Broadway Books (once a unit of Doubleday, now part of Random House's Crown Publishing Group) for rescuing these hilarious romps from final obscurity. And, I failed to mention in my review of Auntie Mame, the cover and title-page art is just *perfect*! Edwin Fotheringham, the artist, even has a perfect Mame-ish name.

In Auntie Mame, Patrick is whisked off at the end of his "education" at St. Boniface Academy for a graduation trip to Europe with Mame. The misadventures of Mame in Venice alone ("Horsefeathers" by itself has the power to make me fall about laughing, you'll see why when you read the book) would make this book worth reading...but Lady Gravell-Pitt! Schloss Stinkenbach! Sari Mont d'Or and Mrs. Cantwell doing the demolition derby dance in their little Lebanese retreat, whence Mame retires after a camel-riding incident that...well, never mind, that would be telling instead of reading, and you should read the book.

Really. Honest. You *should* read the book. show less

Around the World picks up where Auntie Mame leaves off: With Patrick and Pegeen saying good bye to their son Michael as he joins Auntie Mame in India for what was supposed to be 2 weeks.

Two years later, nearing Christmas, Michael hasn't returned home and the postcards and letters have stopped coming in. Patrick and Pegeen are besides themselves with worry about where in the world Michael is with Auntie Mame and the trouble they are getting into. Pegeen probes Patrick to tell her what happened on his trip around the world with Auntie Mame and thus our story begins.

I enjoyed this sequel just as much as I enjoyed the first book. When Patrick tells the reader (not his wife, as his adventures would surely send her to an early grave) about show more his trip around the world, he is 17 or 18. This being the trip that Auntie Mame promised him in his last weeks of school at St. Boney Face if he would just help her with a pregnant Agnes.

If the first book came off as being a bit risque for the time, this one is even more so! Which, for me, makes it that much more entertaining. Patrick is less of a dolt this time around as well. His teenage self a little more filled out. I felt a little more understanding towards his disagreements with Mame as she seems to have also let her common sense take a world trip but in the opposite direction.

Vera is back too, which is a lot of fun. I love how she flips between her Pittsburgh personality and her faux British stage personality on a whim. Mame gets a whole new cast of potential uncles for Patrick including an honorable Lord in the British court, a Spanish (I think) lothario, a Nazi, and a super creepy Uncle Beau impersonator (sort of impersonator, he looks like Beau if you're really, really drunk).

Mame is a munitions expert, a thief, and a matchmaker all rolled into one. Just another really great read from Patrick Dennis and more Mame love! show less

Such a witty and sparkling prose!

A greatly enjoyable and captivating reading! Auntie Mame is such a brilliant and sophisticated Lady and such a sweet and loving aunt (but nothing conventional ...) that nobody will resist her!
Set in the '30s and '40s and '50s, it hasn't lost at all its sparkling humour.

Mame representes a counterculture that was almost non-existent at the time the book was written.

She's anti-establishment, anti-bourgeois, anti-racist, anti-bad taste, and anti-pretension...She's also pro-youth, pro-sex, pro-tolerance, pro-nudity, and pro-drugs (though her drug of choice's gin lol).

There's a prequeL left to enjoy. I know now that I'll hardly ever be parted from Auntie Mame. She won't let me forget her.

This did not have the same kick as the first book. It was jaded and cynical at the beginning and even though some of his memories of his travels with Mame were amusing, it did not have the sparkle. I couldn't get past the fact that these two parents had let their small child go away with this woman and had made little effort to get him back. Meh. I'll stick with the Rosalind Russell movie.

Every bit as funny and more as the original. One of the best books I’ve read and one of the best characters ever created.

Cashing in on the popularity of his original book, Patrick Dennis wrote thsi sequel in 1958 that covers in flashback the trip abroad he young Patrick Dennis took with his aunt after his somewhat precipitous departure from St. Boniface Academy.

Covering the pair's adventures in Paris, London, Venice, Austria, the Mideast & a somewhat irregular voyage back to the US. This book, while funny, is more forced than his first volume. Auntie Mame, while always flighty, appears rather foolish in several of the chapters.

Still it's a fun summer read.

Minus the second-to-last chapter, this was good and oh-so-funny. The Camel ride, presentation at court, etc--hilarious!