Customer Reviews

The Way the Family Got Away: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Our small book club meets once a month & I usually don't finish reading the selection until the night before -- even though I always buy the book right after we decide the next title. I'm busy but optimistic. Well, I started this book Sunday night (2 days ago)& literally could not put it down. I haven't been this enthralled and moved (no pun intended) by anything we've read since Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes". I HIGHLY recommend it -- I have been looking at the world a little differently today because of it.

And it couldn't come at a better time. You've never read anything like this book. Buy it and read it now. After you've read it, read it again. Michael Kimball is one of the most promising writers of the new millennium. One hundred and sixty pages of finely-crafted genius--Kimball is a master of rhythm and melody, delivering a story as powerful as a hammer blow to the soul. If you have a weak heart, suffer back problems, or are a pregnant woman, step out of the car to the left. If you are ready to experience something bold, new and exciting, then this ride is for you.

And it couldn't come at a better time. You've never read anything like this book. Buy it and read it now. After you've read it, read it again. Michael Kimball is one of the most promising writers of the new millennium. One hundred and sixty pages of finely-crafted genius--Kimball is a master of rhythm and melody, delivering a story as powerful as a hammer blow to the soul. If you have a weak heart, suffer back problems, or are a pregnant woman, step out of the car to the left. If you are ready to experience something bold, new and exciting, then this ride is for you.

I loved reading this book so much that I couldn't put it down. The children's stories and the ways they talk stay with you long after you finish their tale. It's an excellent and satisfying read.

Man, oh, man; I really loved this book. I picked it up because I liked the cover and then I didn't put it down until I was done. Really. Every sentence in it is like no other sentence outside it. I never have written one of these reviews before but this thing broke my heart, and, somehow, also, moved me to action. I want everyone to read it. Anyone who ever rode in a car, anyone who ever had a mother or a father, anyone who lived in a house, anyone anyone, anyone who ever suspected that America was sad and beautiful through and through, will love it. I think. Maybe not everyone, though, now that I think of it. It is a difficult book, in terms of its grammar and content. It isn't for the weak or the simple. Read it or don't, I guess. I think if you don't, though, if people don't, that that will be too bad. A Tragedy.

Kimball speculates brilliantly on the linguistic and imaginative universe of childhood. The games that the children play with their string and paper dolls represent bizarre yet moving attempts to come to terms with the death of their little brother and the new pregnancy of their mother. Inner and outer worlds are blurred in a series of strange symbolic exchanges as the difficulties the children have in coming to terms with the experience of death, sex, loss and birth are presented. The imaginative challenges of writing about childhood using only the intellectual resources of childhood are formidable. Kimball meets them head on and has written a visceral, wrenching and compelling account of a family's collapse. That the formal challenges are met with determination and success, that the novel appears to have been wrested whole from a landscape of devastation and pain allows the reader a certain exhilaration as well.

Michael Kimball breathes life into American experimental fiction in this moving debut novel. The tale reads on one level like timeless myth-making, as the family makes its way from Texas to Michigan with their infant child, a few days past his funeral, in the car trunk. But the unusual narration, and Kimball's adeptness at imparting grief through both the telling and the silences, make "The Way the Family Got Away" the freshest literary fiction. The stories of the death, the family, and the trip north are told through the alternating voices of the surviving young brother and sister: The brother tells the tale in terms of which possessions the family must barter to get from one town to the next, while the sister narrates the doll version of the family drama and hopes to bring her baby brother--magically--back to life. In Kimball's novel we find a domestic fiction more often rendered by women: an emotional tale of narrow parameters and deep impact. This writer is one to watch: Highly recommended for both academic libraries interested in literary or American fiction, and medium-to-large public libraries.

I absolutely hate to give bad reviews, but from my viewpoint this story was awful. Maybe I was just repulsed by the whole storyline, or maybe I couldn't STAND the irritating drivel coming from these poor children's mouths, all I know is that the whole thing drove me nuts! Perhaps, that was the point! I think the author wanted to write something very different and engaging. As I can see, some reviewers loved the book. I found it draining and exasperating. For some great surrealism, read The Waves by Virginia Woolf or 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - fine writers.

I was very disappointed to learn that this authour is not the same Michael Kimball who wrote Undone and Mouth to Mouth though Amazon implies that it is. I wonder how many other authours who share the same name are presented as one in the same.