The Used World: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Haven Kimmel (Author)
Key Phrases: prophetic mission, The Used World, Haven Kimmel, Jim Hank (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Kimmel (Something Rising (Light and Swift); A Girl Named Zippy) returns to rural Indiana in her expansive third novel. Hazel Hunnicut is the proprietor of Hazel Hunnicut's Used World Emporium, the station at the end of the line for myriad antiques and junk in Jonah, Ind. With her passel of cats and distaste for convention, Hazel is eccentric but grudgingly beloved by her two employees: Claudia, a tall and lonely woman ostracized for her androgynous appearance, and Rebekah, who is still recovering from an oppressive Pentecostal upbringing. With a nudge from Hazel and the appearance of an abandoned infant (whose junkie mother, a friend of Hazel's junkie sister, is dead), the two women form a relationship, providing momentum as an unlikely family takes shape and hidden connections between the characters are revealed. The story has many satisfying layers, but melding them requires Kimmel to jump around in time, sometimes to confusing results (among the pasts visited are Rebekah's childhood; Hazel's upbringing and the backstory on her relationship with the locals; and dreamlike visions of a long-ago romance between a black groundskeeper and a white judge's daughter). It's an intriguing puzzle box of a novel with a few edges left unsanded. (Sept.)
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From Bookmarks Magazine
The Used World is the newest novel in a very loose trilogy comprised of The Solace of Leaving Early (2002) and Something Rising (Light and Swift) (***1/2 May/June 2004), both portraits of small-town life in Indiana. Here, Kimmel explores faith in religion, friendship, and family through three female outcasts whom circumstance brings together. Kimmel’s vivid, poetic writing, mixed with compassion and wry humor, reveals their multilayered lives slowly and satisfyingly. Critics noted some digressions, complex interconnections, melodrama, and confusing shifting viewpoints but praised the novel’s overall message of hope. As the character Rebekah concludes, "What feels like the end of the world never is. It never is."

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (September 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743247787
• ISBN-13: 978-0743247788
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #374,868 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "What feels like the end of the world never is.", February 12, 2008

By	Linda Bulger (Avon, Maine) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Once in a while you read a book that's so multi-layered and absorbing, you just don't want to let it go when it's finished. "The Used World" is one of those books. Other reviewers have said that they finished this book and started straight over again at the beginning, and I can see why: you have the feeling that it's so full of riches, you haven't done it justice with one read.

"The Used World" follows the threads of three women's stories and binds them together into an unexpected and unusual present. Everything you assume about love and family is shaken up and reinvented.

Hazel Hunnicutt, a woman in her sixties who lives alone with her cats, is the proprietor of the Used World Emporium, a warehouse-and-barn full of wares carrying the weight of the past. In flashbacks we learn of Hazel's love for her childhood friend Finney, a girl full of light and fun. The story of Finney's self-destructive love and its sad outcome are an undercurrent to Hazel's present.

Hazel's employees are Claudia and Rebekah. Claudia, forty years old and mourning the death of her mother, is a freakishly tall woman forever disenfranchised from the joys others take for granted.

The younger Rebekah is a refugee from a fundamentalist church, disowned by her family, pregnant by an immature young man who left her for a college girl.

Into this mix come a baby, a dog, a gentler church, some wild sisters, and the unbearable weight of past intentions and actions. Though the redemptive outcome of all these forces is never assured, ultimately there is the chance for more peace than these women have known in their troubled lives. They don't get there easily, but they do get there.

The story is simple but the structure complex, the writing magical. The characters, including the cast of supporting players, are so finely drawn that it took my breath away. About baby Oliver who had kicked his blanket over his head, Kimmel writes: "... Oliver had become so distressed he'd kicked his blanket up over his head. 'What a problem,' Claudia said, uncovering him and lifting him up, his little body still such a surprise in her hands. How could something so insubstantial bear within it Oliver's nature, his character, everything that would compel him into adulthood?"

These three women spent much of their lives on the outside looking in, an isolation Kimmel illustrates again and again with scenes that ring so true. About the young Hazel visiting her friend Finney's family on Christmas Day: "What a treasure they were, these people for whom cakes collapsed, sleepy, normal people who worked hard and loved their daughter, and knew how to take a holiday off and spend it. They SPENT Christmas Day, like a bonus check or a tax return, while at the sterile Hunnicutt Clinic shoes were always worn; sleeping was a private activity conducted only at night, in a bedroom; and everything was hoarded -- money and joy alike."

The dramas of this book, past and present, are woven together with the everyday business of living. If you invest the time to read "The Used World," you'll be rewarded with an unforgettable story, told with humbling beauty. Highly recommended.

Linda Bulger, 2008

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't Give Up on Haven Kimmel's Books, January 6, 2008

By	Karen McQuillen (Yardley, PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"The Used World" is one of the best novels I've read in a long time. The key to enjoying Haven Kimmel's work is to let her stories take their time. Yes, this is difficult in these days of so much to do, not to mention the need for instant gratification! I was ready to give up on "The Solice of Leaving Early" about 50 pages into it because I couldn't figure out who was who and what was going on. However, I decided to stick with it, and it was well worth it. Both "The Used World" and "The Solice of Leaving Early" provide a payout to those take their time to savor these wonderful stories.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Overused Stereotypes And Plot Devices, May 23, 2008

By	Susan Y. Schoonover (Boulder, CO) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Used World: A Novel (Paperback)

I admit I have only read one other of Haven Kimmel's books, THE SOLACE OF LEAVING EARLY, and I enjoyed that and thought it was well written with believable characters. Though THE USED WORLD has the same setting (apparently a fictionalized Muncie, Indiana and its surroundings) and Church of the Brethren minister Amos (and very peripherally his wife Langston) who are major characters in "SOLACE" also appear in this effort the books are quite different.

This book is filled with melodramatic, unbelievable plot lines, some borrowed from other sources, and characters who are either misunderstood, mistreated saints or the most awful caricatures of rural Midwesterners. In fact Kimmel writes with such utter contempt for those who shop at WalMart, eat at McDonalds and attend large fundamentalist churches that it was often difficult for me to continue reading. I will believe Kimmel has met and even known people from rural Indiana who commit these just mentioned transgressions but she seems to be unable to convey any empathy for or write about such individuals with any genuineness or respect for them as fellow humans.

Some portions of the book are well written enough but other segments are awkward and unclear and a little editing and rewriting would have been beneficial. A pet peeve of mine is how invisible rural working class Americans are in today's mass media. I do appreciate Ms Kimmel setting her book(s) among the ordinary folks of rural Indiana but I am disappointed by her inability to see beyond the usual stereotypes of residents of such areas at least in this novel.