Customer Reviews

The Solace of Leaving Early

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

First of all, I could just hug Haven Kimmel for not falling into the trap that so many of today's authors fall into, which is in thinking that if 50,000 words are good, then 500,000,000 will be EVEN BETTER. It was a great pleasure to read such a tightly woven story and gave me the impression that Kimmel has really WORKED on her craft as a writer -- she has the discipline to keep her writing spare and lean.

The characters were lovely. Okay, I got a bit weary of Amos' constant pedantic mental plodding through books of theological thought that are obscure to anyone who hasn't spent time in a seminary, and there were times when I wished I could yank Langston out of the pages by her wrist, give her a smack in the head and then shove her back into the story, but Kimmel's resolution of the quirks of the two characters was worth these annoyances. At first, I thought Kimmel was just being show-offy of (and boresome about) her own time spent in seminary and graduate school, but as the characters opened up, I perceived there was a reason. Langston's mother was a jewel and the two little girls were haunting.

Considering the subject matter (a brutal murder), this was a surprisingly witty book that made me laugh out loud several times at Kimmel's deft turn of a phrase. The ending was superb.

I loved it. I recommend it highly. Kimmel is a gifted writer.

(P.S. I had those little cream cheese mints at my own wedding and they aren't THAT bad.)

Forget love. Forget anger. Forget fear. The most powerful human emotion is grief. It's also the most mysterious, and yet the most concrete. Haven Kimmel, following her stellar memoir "A Girl Named Zippy," explores grief from four different experiences via the primary characters of this remarkable debut novel. Like Zippy, it's set in a tiny Indiana town, where Langston Braverman has returned upon abandoning her doctoral studies, only to find her deep self-absorption challenged by her mother, self-doubting minister Amos and two recently orphaned girls gripped by religious ecstasy. As all of them are thrown together by tragedy, each deals with his or her grief in distinctly different ways which Kimmel reveals in incredible depth and nuance as she weaves their increasingly entwined lives. It is not a romance -- though there are certainly romantic elements. It is not a melodrama -- at least not in any contrived way, in that every note of the story rings true to the people and situations. What "Solace" is is a confident and immensely readable work from a young writer with a true gift for language, feeling for her characters and the mysticism of everyday life. With this, Kimmel joins the ranks of today's top writers (Franzen, Chabon) as well such distinctly southern/middle American voices as Ellen Gilchrist and Flannery O'Connor.

Placed into my hands by a woman at my neighborhood bookstore who said, 'Read this,' what a wonderful discovery this book was. Langston Braverman (and howz THAT for a great name for your character?) returns home (after a grim end to an affair and in the middle of her PhD orals) not for the usual reasons; she wants to get away from it all. But she find herself right in the middle of it all, the biggest 'it' being the death of her childhood friend and the fact that she's asked to help care for her friends deeply disturbed daughters. With great story lines, believable dialog, and revised Midwestern values, we read, compulsively hooked, as these troubled individuals struggle to find solace and peace. Wow, what a terrific book!

Haven Kimmel has a way of making prose feel like poetry. I rarely read a book twice, and I've read this one three times over the past 18 months. I've sent it to friends and to family and passed around copies to coworkers. Each time I start thinking about what so completely engaged me with the book, I go back to read it again. Ultimately, I think I love The Solace of Leaving Early because it leaves me feeling hopeful that after all the pain that comes with being human, it's still worth it to come along for the wobbly ride on this overpopulated planet.

How to describe it? It features a cast of quirky characters in small-town Indiana and tells a tragic, often funny, story about how their lives weave together in love, compassion, and hope after horrific loss. I immediately found the self-doubting minister, Amos Townsend, endearing. (Picture a pious Hugh Grant.) He's the quintessential poster child for existential angst. Langston Braverman's character will probably annoy you at first, but hang in there--she eventually will win you over. A self-absorbed graduate student, Langston bags her Ph.D. program in the wake of a disastrous love affair with one of her professors. At home, licking her wounds and hiding out with her faithful dog, Germane, she finds herself drawn into the lives of Amos and two orphaned sisters. The little girls, Immaculata and Epiphany, turn to religious visions after watching their parents' violent deaths. Even so, you will laugh as often as you cry, because Haven Kimmel has a gift for funny and wry dialogue. The ending is...priceless! You don't want to miss this book.

Forget love. Forget anger. Forget fear. The most powerful -- and mysterious -- human emotion is grief. It's also perhaps the most difficult emotion for a writer to explore. But in this remarkably assured and affecting debut novel, Haven Kimmel looks at grief with with deft assuredness, depth and compassion. Returning to a small town setting similar to her stunning 2001 memoir "A Girl Named Zippy," she weaves the compelling stories of self-absorbed Langston Braverman, guilt-burdened minister Amos, Langston's strong-willed mother and two visions-gripped girls, thrown together by a brutal tragedy. It's not a romance -- though there are romantic elements. It's not a melodrama -- every situation, every character response, rings true. Kimmel exceeds the gift for language and storytelling that already made "Zippy" such an entertaining and meaty read. And with both an eye for detail and honest feeling for her characters, she joins both the emerging elite of young American writers (Franzen, Chabon) and the company of such iconic southern/middle American writers as Ellen Gilchrist and Flannery O'Connor.

I am so glad I found this book and Haven Kimmel--what a writer. The prose is wonderful, the kind of writing where you go back over sentences to feel the beauty and the craft of a perfect phrase--over and over. I haven't read a book like this in so long, it had no cliches, no tiresome plot devices, just a funny, sad, sweet, well thought out story. Kimmel brings the characters together in a perfectly believeable way, it always rings true. Spend a few days (you don't want to give this book up too soon) with Langston, Amos, Germane, Alice's the sweet wounded daughters and all the major and minor characters that are written so clearly. Read it at least once!

The Solace of Leaving Early is a wonderfully intelligent, literate novel. The characters are original and well-drawn; I quite enjoyed spending time with them. I did find the ending to be a bit abrupt. I loved it, but it came too soon. I think this story could have gone on for another 50-100 pages and not have overstayed its welcome, thanks to the mega-talent of Haven Kimmel. I adored A Girl Named Zippy and look forward to Haven's next novel. I hope we don't have to wait too long!

This is a novel about domestic abuse and it's after effects on an entire community. What makes this more sensitive, is that the community is a very small town in Indiana and the people that live there have known each other for a lifetime.
The impact of the abuse is more personalized because of the familiarity of the townsfolk and the reactions of the surviviors more exposed and accountable. With domestic abuse comes grief, and grief can beget unresolved grief, which is ripe in this tightly knit clan from Haddington, Indiana.

Presenting a touching story of two little girls exposed to the brutal slaying of their mother, Author Kimmel allows the event to rip through the town's church where the guilt and grief card is played handsomely by Pastor Amos Townsend. The pastor is suddenly in charge of coordinating the future of the two traumatized children by the basically geriatric and infirmed relatives. Confronted with the prospects of adopting the children out, Pastor Townsend searches to work out a solution. Heavily leaning on Anna Braverton, fellow churchgoer and intellectual confidant, Amos struggles to provide guidance and compose sermons for his congregation in one of the most personally challenging periods of his life.

At the same time, Langston Braverman (daughter of Anna and Walt) aborts her PH.D. and all prospects as a university professor by walking out on her orals, packing up her dilapidated car and heading home with her faithful dog, Germane. She unexpectantly shows up at her childhood home, moves back into her attic bedroom and settles down to selfish moping. While she becomes aware of the little girls by studying them through her attic window, she decidedly refuses to hear the details of their mother's death, professing that it should be no one's buisness but their own. But, just like a small town, neighbor's lives get tangled, and despite all Langston's attempts to stay uninvolved, others work to make her a key player in the future of two tragically orphaned sisters.

It is a tribute to Haven Kimmel's strengths as a writer that this is a good book despite its flaws. Her story draws together a troubled small-town pastor, a depressed young woman, and two traumatized children. In other hands this could have been very grim, but Kimmel has a light touch, a quirky sense of humor, and great love for all her characters. She has a poet's eye for the perfect phrase and the perfect moment to stop. Langston and Townsend are complex and believable, not always likeable, but always intelligent.

As to the flaws, readers of "A Girl Named Zippy" will be surprised to find out that the young girl who refused to believe in God has grown up to find, not just religion, but esoteric and erudite theology. We are expected to believe that an entire small-town family and the town's pastor share a deep interest in Kierkegaard, Nietzche, and St. Thomas Aquinas. It's possible, but reads like a projection of the author's interests. While many great novels have dealt with religious doubts and searching, constant references to theologians are best left out.

The ending of the book is pleasing and beautifully told (Langston's loving speech to the children going off to school is priceless), but not believable. While we have seen some signs of the pastor's changing feelings toward Langston, we are unprepared for her about face.

In spite of these flaws, the book is a beautiful rendition of people awakening from pain to find themselves woven firmly into each others lives.

It's difficult to write a novel about faith and romance that's smart but not smug, moving but not preachy, and entertaining on a purely plot level. Remarkably, Haven Kimmel has done just that in SOLACE--she's a wordsmith of the first order, a common-sense theologian and a splendid storyteller. She's also created two characters--Amos and Langston--who stay with you as if they were genuine folks, the preacher from your neighborhood church or an old friend returned home--a bit worse for wear--after years away. Add to this the author's subtle asides, droll throwaway lines, narrative winks and quick wisdom, and you've got a great read, one of the best in years as far as I'm concerned.