Customer Reviews

Things Kept, Things Left Behind (Iowa Short Fiction Award)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Jim Tomlinson's "Things Kept, Things Left Behind" is peopled by rounded, entirely believable characters--victims, as we all are, of life's quirks and mis-matchings. The almost inadvertently criminal couple, the absent father and his disengaged adult son, couples who should have married each other and couples who shouldn't have: there are only so many situations in the world, and all this has been written about before. What sets this collection apart--what makes it such an enjoyable read--is Tomlinson's solid craftsmanship. He writes with the assurance of someone who doesn't have to show off: a fine, empathic writer and a first-rate storyteller. I loved reading this book; I loved his respect for his characters, his simple spot-on dialogue, the hope he plants in small gestures. There is a depth to his prose that lingers in the mind, together with the small mysteries he plants so artfully for the reader to consider. Excellent collection, well-deserving of the Iowa Short Fiction Award.

Susan O'Neill, Author, Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam

Each of the stories in this collection is handled with great care and finesse, creating a whole that leaves the reader feeling both satisfied and heartbroken.

Basically, these are not easy stories to read because of the sadness and deep hurt they depict, and yet after reading them you will feel hopeful, despite the tragic beauty of the world--best exemplified in the character LeAnn:

"Sometimes she thinks of herself as a howl. The wail of a coyote, maybe, or a lone banshee, a shriek dying away in the night without reaching ears. Piercing, like something wrenched raw from an orphaned soul. A hollow thing, haunted, a sound that lives on, still shrill in memory long after its echo dies out."

If I were asked to compare Tomlinson's world to that of another writer, I would choose Andre Dubus--as both so beautifully, and skillfully, portray that which is damaged and brutal in life, that which is violent and beautiful. Much like Dubus's stories, these are stories of families broken or cobbled together, of people on the edge, of anger, of betrayal, and above all else, of desperation and shame.

I hope you will buy and read this collection (and also suggest to your library that they order a copy), as you will not regret it. Not by a long shot.

There's much to be said for those who pen their first books at an age when many working folks are winding down their careers. Such writers can draw upon decades of experience, giving their writing the kind of nuance and ambiguity that comes with mature hindsight.

For these reasons, one may rejoice in Jim Tomlinson's debut short-story collection, "Things Kept, Things Left Behind" (University of Iowa Press, $[...] paperback), for which Tomlinson won the prestigious Iowa Short Fiction Award.

Born in 1941 three weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Tomlinson grew up in a small Illinois town and now lives in rural Kentucky. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of the 11 short stories in this collection have the Bluegrass State as their backdrop and have struggling, working-class folks at their center.

An example is LeAnn McCray, who appears in the two title stories, "Things Kept" and "Things Left Behind." In the first, we learn that LeAnn sometimes "felt restless, strange to her own skin. It was a troublesome feeling, one that would come on her without warning, as it did one Tuesday afternoon in late October."

That day, LeAnn's sister, Cass, needs to talk about helping their stubborn and widowed mother, Georgia, out of debt. Cass suggests that LeAnn ask a mutual friend, Dexter Chalk, for help. The married LeAnn agrees, never letting on that she and Dexter are having an affair. The plan to aid Georgia spirals into an unintended climax, in which LeAnn learns that it's not just the living who have secrets.

In "Things Left Behind," LeAnn's secret affair with Dexter is unwittingly divulged to her husband, Lonnie, by a well-intentioned hotel maid. Because Lonnie is far from a perfect husband and father, Tomlinson allows ambiguity to seep into LeAnn's infidelity.

In "Prologue (two lives in letters)," we are introduced to two young, idealistic teenagers, Davis Menifee Jr. and Claire Lyons, through a sampling of their correspondence spanning 34 years.

Thrown together as delegates to the 1963 Congressional Youth Leadership Conference for one week in Washington, D.C., Davis and Claire become close friends in the wake of Kennedy's assassination and political uncertainty. But they take radically different paths. Claire becomes an activist lawyer and eventually a member of Congress. Davis protests the Vietnam War and flees to Canada to evade the draft.

Both start families, question their choices, wonder where their youth has gone, and hope for better times. For many readers who have spent a few decades on this good earth, the words of these two Americans may be painfully familiar.

There are other gems in this collection: In "Stainless," Warren and Annie have one last dinner together as they divide up their belongings at the end of their marriage. In "Squirrels," a man is bedeviled by his ex-wife because she is bedeviled by squirrels that invaded her attic. And there are the two brothers in "Lake Charles" who share a bond forged in a horrendous, life-altering childhood accident. In such stories, Tomlinson keeps his observations and humor sharp, his prose lean as a marathon runner.

Sometimes in a Tomlinson tale, it's difficult to tell the winners from the losers, the resilient from the fragile. But his magic lies in the shadows of people's lives, those dark recesses where uncertainty reigns.

It's as if Tomlinson holds a mirror up to us and says: It's all a confusing mess, but we will survive because the other option is just too damn scary.

This is unadorned wisdom earned through experience. And it takes a skilled, mature writer such as Tomlinson to bring it to life.

[This review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]