Wide Blue Yonder: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Jean Thompson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 26, 2001

A 1999 National Book Award finalist for WHO DO YOU LOVE, Jean Thompson towers into the stratosphere with her new novel, WIDE BLUE YONDER. It is the summer of 1999, and something big and bad is coming to Springfield, Illinois, 'the place the Weather lived.' WIDE BLUE YONDER is a novel about weather in all its permutations, climatic, emotional, even metaphysical. Our guides through this season of blazing heat and fearsome storms comprise an unlikely quartet, each preparing in some measure for the end of the world. Uncle Harvey believes he is the Weather Channel's 'Local Forecast.' Yet even an arsenal of meteorological facts and figures can't stanch his existential fears. Harvey's niece, Josie, is fixed with a different predicament. She's seventeen with nowhere to go in the Land of Lincoln except into deep trouble. Josie's mother, Elaine, feigns cheerful efficiency, desperately masking a far more urgent quest. And then there's the loner Rolando, who hails from Los Angeles. A human storm system fueled by boundless rage, Rolando is on course to make Springfield the ground zero of his wrath. Newsweek's Jeff Giles memorably described Thompson's previous collection, WHO DO YOU LOVE, as 'a beautiful book, but a hell of a sad one' WIDE BLUE YONDER burns brighter, yet moves in the same mysterious ways.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Domestic tensions deflate into screwball hijinks in this pleasant, if somewhat toothless, debut novel by the author of Who Do You Love: Stories, a 1999 National Book Award finalist for fiction. Set over one summer in Springfield, Ill., the novel follows four characters floundering amid life's disappointments. Elaine is a wry, open-hearted divorce ("so far she had a business that worked, a marriage that didn't, and a daughter who the jury was still out on"). Her daughter, Josie, hates Springfield, hates her parents' divorce, hates her whole life. She wants to skip town, but settles for falling in love with a policeman and scheming to get herself arrested. Elaine and Josie find themselves caring for her ex-husband's doddering great uncle Harvey, a half-blind, compulsive watcher of the Weather Channel. Harvey just wants to be left alone, and he especially wants to avoid the cataract surgery that Elaine insists on. Meanwhile, in California, a violent young man named Rolando steals a car and heads east. A lifetime of abuse from his peers has plunged him into delusional rage. Like the weather systems that Harvey obsessively tracks, he rolls toward Springfield. Thompson's characters are mostly likable, especially the mordant Elaine, determined to muddle through flawed relationships and shoulder her responsibilities, however remote happiness may seem. Unfortunately, the novel loses its edge by the time it reaches its sensational climax. The fury and mute pain of Rolando and Harvey, respectively which start out lending the book its ominous tension are blunted, and the mood tips toward gentle comedy. It's a credit to Thompson that the contrived plot still holds the reader's attention, and that her tidy, optimistic ending never becomes saccharine. Beneath these cheerful shenanigans, a more truthful story seems to stir it's a pity Thompson hasn't let it come to the surface.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

It's summer 2001 in Springfield, IL, and Harvey Sloan's sole interest in life continues to be the Weather Channel. His great-niece, Josie, possessed by a hopeless teenage love, confides in Abe Lincoln. Her divorced mother, Elaine, starts to believe that a good or bad day is indicated by her car's service engine light. Meanwhile, Rolando Gottschalk, armed with a gun and an unknown agenda, seems to be headed to Springfield from Los Angeles, leaving a wake of random destruction. Add Mitch, a gorgeous cop, and Rosa, a Mexican cleaning woman, to the mix and you have a novel with characters both memorable and believable. Thompson, a 2001 National Book Award finalist for Who Do You Love: Stories, moves with precision from the first paragraph to the last in chapters that read like short stories. She transforms the familiar themes of desire for happiness, fulfillment, and redemption by using weather as a powerful emblem. This is a novel to savor. For all fiction collections.
- Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (December 26, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074320512X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743205122
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,736,112 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning. A Tour de Force., December 30, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Wide Blue Yonder: A Novel (Hardcover)

Telling a cohesive story from the narrative perspective of multiple characters is one of the toughest tricks in fiction. One voice usually outshines the others. Wide Blue Yonder is the glorious exception that proves the rule. All four voices are not only distinctive and wonderful but they balance and inform each other as well, spanning the spectrum from a young girl's teenage ennui to a con man's deepening madness. That Thompson's prose is crisp and often startlingly inventive is icing on a cake that is already deep and rich and completely satisfying.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous, January 20, 2002

By 

Elizabeth Hendry (New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Wide Blue Yonder: A Novel (Hardcover)

It's been a long time since I enjoyed reading a novel as much as I have enjoyed reading Wide Blue Yonder. The novel is well-written and funny and contains wonderful characters. The story takes place in Springfield Illinois in the hot, hot summer of 1999. Josie, a disaffected 17 year old lives with her divorced mother and spends the summer working at Taco Bell, avoiding her father, and stalking a gorgeous young policeman who wandered into her life one day. Her mother, Elaine, who tries so hard to be happy, is also trying to help her ex-husband's Uncle Harvey, who refers to himself as the Local Forecast (he's a bit obsessed with the weather channel). As Harvey keeps track of the weather heating up, things are heating up in Springfield. Josie's pursuit of her obsession takes her down a dangerous path and Elaine's pursuit of salvation for Harvey threatens to take him down another dangerous path. This story is told with much clever humor, with Josie's cynical observations on Springfield life being perhaps the most amusing. I really enjoyed this novel and highly recommend it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Prose ... But About That Plot ..., March 17, 2002

By 

Elizabeth Crain "bibliotheca97116" (Oregon) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wide Blue Yonder: A Novel (Hardcover)

According to seventeen-year-old Josie, Springfield is one of those places that "used to be important but were now only good for being state capitals." With great characters (flawed and all), amazing prose, and using weather as a metaphor, Jean Thompson offers up a troubled story. This is a book that is driven by its appealing characters -- and not by the plot. The heat and storms of summer 1999 run parallel with the characters' unheaval and ultimate transformation. But the great prose is not enough to warrant a five star rating -- the plot is weak at best and the ending just plain silly. That said, her characters are awesome: Frank, Teeny, Yoo Hoo, Officer Crook -- I could not get enough. Also, her keen observations made for hilarious reading (I especially got a kick out of Abe Lincoln turned father figure to young Josie).
If you are a softie for great writing, dialogue, and good character development, do not miss this book. I look forward to Jean Thompson's next book and will read "Who Do You Love" in the meantime.