The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth [Paperback]

Bill Holm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 2001

Growing up, Bill Holm knew what failure was: “to die in Minneota.” But after returning to his hometown (“a very small dot on an ocean of grass”) after 20 years’ absence, he wasn’t so sure. Finding pleasure in the customs and characters of small-town life, in The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth he writes with affection about the town elders, seen by those in the outside world as misfits and losers. “They taught me what to value, what to ignore, what to embrace, and what to resist.” In his trek through the heartland, Holm covers a satisfyingly wide emotional terrain, from scandalous affairs in the 1950s to his aunt’s touching attempts to transcend poverty with perfume and movie-star airs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Holm (Coming Home Crazy) is living once again in the small town of Minneota, Minn., where he grew up, and he is feeling sentimental about it. He is a smart writer and has some interesting things to say about sense of place, but there is an underlying softness in his attitude towards his hometown that makes these essays treacly, and no amount of literary references can sharpen them. "God knows I tried to escape, to do the right American thing, making a middle-class life in a gentler, lovelier, more urbane place, some better home for an eccentric intellectual misfit," he insists in an essay that rambles from the cost of living in Minneota to the meaning of the town's name ("much water" in Dakota) to reviewer misprints of the title of his first book, but one gets the feeling he never tried all that hard. The history of the town is much less interesting than the characters that populated it in Holm's childhood, and he devotes much of the book to biography of these characters, many of them originally from Iceland. An essay on the way that children are taught to mistrust strangers today segues into a tribute to the elderly woman who often baby-sat for him; an examination of poverty disintegrates into admiration for how his parents forced him to be kind to Sara Kline, "a Minneota 'bag lady,' years before that term became fashionable." It's not that this isn't heartwarming, it's just that it is familiar and sometimes suffers from smugness.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

As a youth, Holm defined failure as dying in his hometown of Minneota, Minnesota. He left to see the world, and when he returned?almost 40, broke, unemployed, divorced, unpublished, and his immediate family dead?home looked better to him. He began to write about the people who were most important to him in his childhood, the old Icelandic immigrants who were his relatives and neighbors in a tiny town on the western edge of Minnesota. In this memoir, we meet them all, including Pauline Bardal, a spinster without formal education who introduced the author to music and the piano, and Virgil Voltaire Gislason, a dandy and bon vivant who delighted in serving proper martinis, even during Prohibition. A fine writer with a wry, self-deprecating style, Holm has done what many authors aspire to do: make the dead live again. In doing so, he has produced a memoir that considers the question of what constitutes success in a culture infused with the immigrant desire to rise in the New World. Highly recommended for public libraries.?Caroline A. Mitchell, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions; Revised edition (February 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157131251X
• ISBN-13: 978-1571312518
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #119,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #12 in Books > Travel > United States > Regions > Central
  • #52 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > Midwest

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Through these pages, Holm's ancestors live again, February 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth: Minneota, Minnesota (Paperback)

Bill Holm writes very movingly about his parents, ancestors, and the people of the town of Minneota. It made me all the more interested in my own family's history. He writes with humor, understanding and compassion. He doesn't dwell too long on sentimentality; indeed, he warns us against it. He strives to show the character and (dare I say it?) soul of some of the notable people he knew in his youth. He has provided us with a wonderful book of essays.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book about people in small places opened my heart., August 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth: Minneota, Minnesota (Paperback)

Bill Holm has a gift with words and brings to life people long dead who had a strong impact on his life. As he opens up his past life, the reader's is also opened. Perhaps it was growing up in a small midwestern town that caused this book to strike a deep chord in me. However,I think it is his ability to bring out the gifts he was given by members of the community that helps all of us see similiar gifts in life.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Openings, September 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth: Minneota, Minnesota (Paperback)

Bill Holm again speaks softly, and humorously. As a sixteen year old whose first wish is to get out of rural Minnesota it is surprisingly nonthreatening. The only disappointing thing about this book is the omission of the author's poem, "Openings,"