The perils of building your dream house...in the country...

Both a comedy (or tragicomedy?) and a biting satire about a couple who "decide" they want a house in the country. Do they even know what they want? They make foolish decision after foolish decision & a modern-day (by 1946 standards) comedy of errors ensues.

If only they listened to their lawyer from the very beginning but their fate is sealed as they plunge forward, head first into certain catastrophe. I was delighted by every page until the whole comedic tone changed. The denouement (the last 1/5)was abrupt. It was not funny any more. Mr. Blandings, once so relatable, and seemingly a good husband, suddenly goes for the metaphorical smackdown on his wife. Even an illustration by Steig shows Mr. Blandings looming largely and aggressively over her as she is forced to cower. The last pages of the book limp along, to its dismal (not funny) ending. The sudden change of tone, rather than keeping to the same consistency that had been established before- as well as the sudden sexism- caused the once hilarious story to all come crashing down in the end. ( )

Does a good job of representing the confusion experienced, and caused, by a home building customer ( )

I purchased this as a gift to my wife after we had moved back in to our remodeled house. We both knew the story going in since we're huge fans of the movie (which I also highly recommend); there are slight differences, but over all the story is familiar.
It is very much a book of its time, upper middle class city people, getting taken advantage of by those slick country folk. it's a bit of a throw-back, but a very fun and quick read. Apparently he wrote a sequel, so I'm on the hunt for that. ( )

It was clever, sly, and funny... until it started to get real and read like a horror story or a morality tale. Read it. But don't start to take it seriously like I did. ( )

Mr. Blandings is doing well at work and decides it is time to own his own house. So he goes to Connecticut and buys land to build his dream house.

It starts slow. It is better when you read it with sarcasm as Mr. Blandings has trouble with the seller, the architects, and the builder. It becomes extremely funny in Book 2 when I read Mrs. Blandings' journal entries about it. The ownership of the house is funny also as Mr. Blandings figures out how much this house cost him and now he is responsible for repairs and additions he hopes to add ( )

My mom and dad ran a custom home building company, one where I grew up half on job sites and the other half sitting quietly in a corner as clients discussed what they wanted. For reasons that would become apparent, the movie with Cary Grant, Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House, was one of their favorites.

I didn't even know it was a book until recently, and immediately checked it out from the library. If you're familiar with the movie - and liked it - take heart, because the script paid close attention to the book. As someone familiar with clients who misunderstood the nature of change-orders or that, indeed, they cost extra money, or clients who argue ferociously over whether or not an extra closet is really needed, or even a home-owner yourself, you'll laugh yourself sick.

Mr. and Mrs. Blandings naively step into home-owning, and later home-building, and find themselves stuck in the mud before too long. All of the joys and terrors of buying a home - the "other people" your real estate agent keeps ominously mentioning, the contractors, the subcontractors, the owners themselves - everyone is hilariously skewered in the most accurate account of building a home ever written; amazingly, all of this humor remains the same, even though the book was published in 1946. ( )

If you've ever built a house, you are probably familiar with the myriad frustrations that plague such an endeavor. There's the dazzling array of choices you have to make, many of which you never once considered before signing on the dotted line with a builder. There are the inevitable slowdowns of work due to late deliveries, ornery inspectors, bad weather, and so forth. There are the unexpected problems and their resulting ballooning price tags, because the initial bottom line cost has never once in the history of building turned out to be the actual cost. But even with everything that can cause stress, it's worth it to be able to design exactly what you want in a home, right? The hilarious novel Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream Home by Eric Hodgins might argue that.

Set in the 1940s, the novel is definitely dated, but it still manages to earn the reader's giggles. The Blandings, who have never before thought of living out of the City, have decided to build a country home. Mr. Blandings works in advertising and has been very successful with an important laxative account. His newly secure position makes him think that he should, like others of his level, build a home in the country, and his wife concurs. They traipse around the countryside, falling in love with a neglected, ramshackle, historic home and property on Bald Mountain just outside a small Connecticut town. And this is where their trouble starts. First they must deal with a slick real estate agent and the local owner, who is up-charging these city folk for the land by about 1000%. Then they hire an architect, and then another architect. Then they actually have to build their new home, deal with the tradesmen who come in to work on the place, and experience all of the pitfalls that every first time homebuilder experiences.

These experiences are completely and totally entertaining. Mr. Blandings can't decide whether it is better to lose face and be cheated or if it's better to confront people. His bumbling attempts to right wrongs and to make his dream home live up to billing are good fun. His constant totting up of the amount he's spending on this home, revised almost daily as his wallet takes hit after hit after hit, really strikes a cord. Everything that can go wrong for the Blandings does and Hodgins mines the deep humor in Mr. Blandings' resigned blusterings. Mrs. Blandings' inability to rein herself in and her complete lack of understanding how each decision she makes, especially once construction has started, snowballs into costing massive amounts of money is both pretty true to life and helps the reader understand Mr. Blandings' exasperation with her. The humor here can be over the top and Hodgins skewers his "act in haste, repent at leisure" characters pretty neatly. For all the Blandings' naivety and infuriating requests, the building trade doesn't get off scot free either. The numbers quoted for each bill are laughably low given today's costs but since the original budgeted cost is mentioned frequently, the reader will still get a sense of how far over budget the Blandings have gone. The book is a witty and entertaining comedy of errors filled with one liner gems, buried in the dry, sometimes biting presentation and it definitely makes me want to see the Cary Grant, Myrna Loy movie of the same name. ( )

The film is absolutely hilarious, and the book does not pale in comparison! ( )

The film is absolutely hilarious, and the book does not pale in comparison! ( )

Here’s the quick synopsis. A nice enough book, but really nothing to get all excited about. Which is interesting, because it is a best seller (from its time) and spawned a couple of different movies.

Mr. and Mrs. Blanding find the house in the country they’ve always wanted (even though they don’t seem to have realized it until they decide to buy it.) Everything possible goes wrong in buying the land. Everything goes wrong in refurbishing/rebuilding the house.

The book is cute, but it suffers from age, and it is really hard to believe that anyone could be quite this naïve. It may be of interest if you care about books from this period or you care where the movies came from. But it is a nicely written, (I say it again) cute book – and nothing more. ( )

I saw the Cary Grant movie, so when I came across the book in a used bookstore I thought, "Ah! It's a book!" and bought it. I thought the movie was so cute, so I was a little surprised and disappointed with the book:

The characters (Mr. and Mrs. Blandings) were not likable - but occasionally I felt that they were supposed to be like that, so that didn't bother me much.

Their daughters were complete brats. My sisters (who are the same ages as the Blandings daughters) don't act like that! But maybe I just come from a weird family.

I might say what really bothered me was the language. But I've read books with swearing on them, and at the most I only flinch whenever I come across a bad word.

So I think it was the unlikable characters plus their bad language, and the fact that I was expecting a cute - maybe even heart-warming book. And it was definitely not heart-warming.

(It was pretty funny, though.) ( )

Made into at least two movies, MR. BLANDINGS ... and THE MONEY PIT.