Rating: 4 rollicking stars of fiveOh 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 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.
