The stories in Things Kept, Things Left Behind explore the ambiguities of kept secrets, the tangles of abandoned pasts, and uneasy accommodations. Jim Tomlinson’s characters each face the desire to reclaim dreams left behind, along with something of the dreamer that was also lost. Starkly rendered, these spiraling characters inhabit a specific place and class---small-town Kentucky, working-class America---but the stories, told in all their humor and tragedy, are universal. In each story the characters face conflict, sometimes within themselves, sometimes with each other. Each carries a past and with it an urge to return and repair. In “First Husband, First Wife,” ex-spouses are repeatedly drawn together by a shared history they cannot seem to escape, and they are finally forced to choose between leaving the past or leaving each other. LeAnn and Cass are grown sisters who conspire to help their prideful mother in “Things Kept.” “Prologue” is a voyeuristic journey through the surprisingly different lives of two star-crossed friends, each with its successes and pitfalls, told through their letters over thirty-five years. In “Stainless,” Annie and Warren divide their possessions on the final night of their marriage. Their realtor has advised them to “declutter” the house they are leaving, but they discover that most of the clutter cannot be so easily removed. The choices are never simple, and for every thing kept, something must be abandoned. Tomlinson’s characters struggle but eventually find their way, often unknowingly, to points of departure, to places where things just might change.
Things Kept, Things Left Behind (Iowa Short Fiction Award)
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From Publishers Weekly
A rural Kentucky where pride and familial honor are sacrosanct, old flames don't extinguish quietly and secrets are hard to keep centers Tomlinson's debut story collection. In the finely wrought "Flights," a writer sits at his father's bedside transcribing the dying man's remembrances, but a cunning shift in perspective shows the real power they hold for the son. The companion stories "Things Kept" and "Things Left Behind" examine what can be salvaged in marriage and what can't. In the first, LeAnn McCray, one of eight children, is summoned home from Ohio by her sister Cass. Cass's plan to square their ailing mother's looming debts by selling off their dead father's valuable desk runs smack into their mother's unselfish love for him. In "Things Left Behind," LeAnn's lover, Dex, sees in her, and in his 187 days of sobriety, a future beyond the next week and his humdrum married life; LeAnn's controlling husband, Lonnie, feels his life and wife "slowly spinning away from him" and soon faces a choice of whether to let her go. Tomlinson frames the characters' rich vernaculars simply, and carefully sets the pasts they're desperate to reconcile and repair within bleak, unvarnished presents. (Oct.)
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Tomlinson, recipient of the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award, has crafted a debut collection around characters who cannot let go of their past, from a woman who finds herself trapped again with her first big mistake to a returning soldier who finally feels capable of exacting revenge for a long-ago family tragedy. Tomlinson's characters struggle to escape their personal histories but are thwarted by a paralyzing inability to do so. In some cases, the history is not even directly their own but that of those they care about; still, the protagonists are deeply affected and unable, or unwilling, to recognize its debilitating effects. In the final story, an epistolary tale between two friends that covers more than four decades, Tomlinson directs his characters from young adulthood in the turbulent 1960s to retirement and an awareness that childhood aspirations have long ago collided with adult realities. Like everyone else in the collection, they must accept the way things are before they can change them. Colleen Mondor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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More About the Author
Jim Tomlinson was born and raised in a small town in northern Illinois. He has lived in a small New England town, and now lives in a small town in the mid-South. He likes living in small towns, likes the people who live in them.
His debut book of short fiction -- Things Kept, Things Left Behind (Univ. of Iowa Press) -- won the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Jim's work has recently or will soon appear in Nougat Magazine, Wind, The Pinch, Five Points, Shenandoah Review, Potomac Review, and Bellevue Literary Review. His awards include an Al Smith Fellowship, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship, and a Wesleyan Writers Conference teaching fellowship.
A low-profile corporate escapee and former engineer, Jim writes full-time now in rural Kentucky.
His debut book of short fiction -- Things Kept, Things Left Behind (Univ. of Iowa Press) -- won the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Jim's work has recently or will soon appear in Nougat Magazine, Wind, The Pinch, Five Points, Shenandoah Review, Potomac Review, and Bellevue Literary Review. His awards include an Al Smith Fellowship, a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship, and a Wesleyan Writers Conference teaching fellowship.
A low-profile corporate escapee and former engineer, Jim writes full-time now in rural Kentucky.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An engrossing, emotionally-sure debut,
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This review is from: Things Kept, Things Left Behind (Iowa Short Fiction Award) (Paperback)
I loved so much about Jim Tomlinson's short story collection, Things Kept, Things Left Behind. It was one of those reads that I felt compelled to carefully portion out so as to not have it be over too quickly. I wanted to savor it.The working-class Appalachians that Tomlinson creates in his stories really resonate with me. They feel real. When Cass (in the the half-title story "Things Kept") says, "When he comes to see Ma, don't matter if it's a hundred degrees, Dale here is wearing long sleeves so she don't see them tattoos he's got drawed on his arms," I KNOW her. She is utterly, absolutely real. I was also impressed by how the women in Things Kept, Things Left Behind are portrayed. They have flaws and desires and idiosyncracies that allowed me to see and appreciate them, warts and all--like real people. There is no gender divide in this collection. Men cheat, women cheat, men love obsessively, women love obsessively, both succeed, both fail. It is a totally engrossing, even-handed look at what makes us human.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a wonderful collection,
By book.of.the.moment "reviewer" (Maine, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Things Kept, Things Left Behind (Iowa Short Fiction Award) (Paperback)
Jim Tomlinson's book Things Kept, Things Left Behind is a collection of short stories which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and rightfully so. I have never been a fan of short stories, as I've mentioned in previous blogs, but slowly, I'm starting to change my opinion.These stories were unlike any short stories I've ever read before. Rather than leaving me wanting more from the characters and the story line, they truly left me satisfied. After each story was finished, I felt as though I had just spent a novel's worth of time with the characters. They were that well developed, and the stories, though tragic at times, are written with a humor and wit that I really enjoyed. In each story there is conflict; be it within the characters themselves as they dream about things they've sacrificed or lost out on, or be it between two or more characters. In each story the conflict is real; the stories are utterly human, and I think this is why I enjoyed reading them as much as I did. If you like short stories, or even if you don't; this is a book I would recommend you pick up in your travels. You won't be sorry.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Award winner lives up to the promise,
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This review is from: Things Kept, Things Left Behind (Iowa Short Fiction Award) (Paperback)
Jim Tomlinson's book is truly deserving of the Iowa Short Fiction Award. This is the best collection of short stories I've read in the past few years. His characters are not doing anything extraordinary, yet they are compelling. His sense of voice and place are exquisitly honed. This is a must read; again and again.
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