- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo (3 Mar 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007161794
- ISBN-13: 978-0007161799
- Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 14.5 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,827,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘Kimmel’s wonderful debut novel is vivid and hopeful, packed with astute allusions to philosophy, theology, sacred art and literature. She uses her sharply drawn observations to add a generous amount of humour to the novel, and does a terrific job of dancing back and forth across the line between tragedy and comedy. Fragile, funny Langston Braverman is a stand-in for all those girls who run headlong away from their roots, only to find that they’ve left something important behind.’ San Francisco Chronicle
'Kimmel writes with an Anne Tyler-like wryness.' Observer
'Arresting. She is a writer who understands that thinking and feeling are not mutually exclusive, and that people can do both at once.' Sunday Telegraph
‘An amazing, humorous overview of small town life. Kimmel credits the reader with intelligence, making the novel a finely measured read with mesmerising, original characters. Ultimately, this is a love story, but the most subtle, original one I have read for years. A novel of ideas, Kimmel makes the reader believe absolutely in the unconventional hero and heroine.’ Irish Examiner
Reviews for A Girl Named Zippy
‘Parenting experts would gag, but Zippy’s parents must have done something right to produce a girl who could write such a simple, lovely book.’ USA Today
‘It’s a cliche to say that a good memoir reads like a well-crafted work of fiction, but Kimmel’s smooth, impeccably humorous prose evokes her childhood as vividly as any novel.’ Publishers Weekly
USA Today
‘To be read for its characters, its surprising phrasing and the way it deals with all sorts of ideas, including the possibility of improbable love.’
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First Sentence
Because he believed in leading a disciplined life, Amos Townsend tried to go to bed at the same time every night, eleven o' clock, or close to it. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt
Because he believed in leading a disciplined life, Amos Townsend tried to go to bed at the same time every night, eleven o' clock, or close to it. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is absolutely the best book I've read in years: Haven Kimmel takes you by the heart and leads you through a heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting and beautiful story about family, community and love. It is written so elegantly and with such wisdom that I assure you that once you've read it, you'll buy it for every man, woman and child you know. At least, that's what I've done.
One note of warning though: it has a slow start so - as with all books - read the first 50 pages before you make the decision whether to carry on or not.
Format:Paperback
This book is a love story and a horrifying story of domestic violence, it has characters who have no self-awareness and characters who have almost too much. It examines love gone bad, as well as love's healing power and yes, it has a happy ending, but that doesn't mean it is in any way sentimental or over-romantic.
I recommend this book, it has a warm heart but keeps a cool eye on humanity's foibles.
I recommend this book, it has a warm heart but keeps a cool eye on humanity's foibles.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
59 reviews
27 of 27 people found the following review helpful
A really beautiful little book
11 Oct 2004
Format:Paperback
First of all, I could just hug Haven Kimmel for not falling into the trap that so many of today's authors fall into, which is in thinking that if 50,000 words are good, then 500,000,000 will be EVEN BETTER. It was a great pleasure to read such a tightly woven story and gave me the impression that Kimmel has really WORKED on her craft as a writer -- she has the discipline to keep her writing spare and lean.
The characters were lovely. Okay, I got a bit weary of Amos' constant pedantic mental plodding through books of theological thought that are obscure to anyone who hasn't spent time in a seminary, and there were times when I wished I could yank Langston out of the pages by her wrist, give her a smack in the head and then shove her back into the story, but Kimmel's resolution of the quirks of the two characters was worth these annoyances. At first, I thought Kimmel was just being show-offy of (and boresome about) her own time spent in seminary and graduate school, but as the characters opened up, I perceived there was a reason. Langston's mother was a jewel and the two little girls were haunting.
Considering the subject matter (a brutal murder), this was a surprisingly witty book that made me laugh out loud several times at Kimmel's deft turn of a phrase. The ending was superb.
I loved it. I recommend it highly. Kimmel is a gifted writer.
(P.S. I had those little cream cheese mints at my own wedding and they aren't THAT bad.)
The characters were lovely. Okay, I got a bit weary of Amos' constant pedantic mental plodding through books of theological thought that are obscure to anyone who hasn't spent time in a seminary, and there were times when I wished I could yank Langston out of the pages by her wrist, give her a smack in the head and then shove her back into the story, but Kimmel's resolution of the quirks of the two characters was worth these annoyances. At first, I thought Kimmel was just being show-offy of (and boresome about) her own time spent in seminary and graduate school, but as the characters opened up, I perceived there was a reason. Langston's mother was a jewel and the two little girls were haunting.
Considering the subject matter (a brutal murder), this was a surprisingly witty book that made me laugh out loud several times at Kimmel's deft turn of a phrase. The ending was superb.
I loved it. I recommend it highly. Kimmel is a gifted writer.
(P.S. I had those little cream cheese mints at my own wedding and they aren't THAT bad.)
23 of 25 people found the following review helpful
true solace
5 July 2002
Format:Paperback
Forget love. Forget anger. Forget fear. The most powerful human emotion is grief. It's also the most mysterious, and yet the most concrete. Haven Kimmel, following her stellar memoir "A Girl Named Zippy," explores grief from four different experiences via the primary characters of this remarkable debut novel. Like Zippy, it's set in a tiny Indiana town, where Langston Braverman has returned upon abandoning her doctoral studies, only to find her deep self-absorption challenged by her mother, self-doubting minister Amos and two recently orphaned girls gripped by religious ecstasy. As all of them are thrown together by tragedy, each deals with his or her grief in distinctly different ways which Kimmel reveals in incredible depth and nuance as she weaves their increasingly entwined lives. It is not a romance -- though there are certainly romantic elements. It is not a melodrama -- at least not in any contrived way, in that every note of the story rings true to the people and situations. What "Solace" is is a confident and immensely readable work from a young writer with a true gift for language, feeling for her characters and the mysticism of everyday life. With this, Kimmel joins the ranks of today's top writers (Franzen, Chabon) as well such distinctly southern/middle American voices as Ellen Gilchrist and Flannery O'Connor.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Not your average light summer read
4 Aug 2003
Format:Paperback
Placed into my hands by a woman at my neighborhood bookstore who said, 'Read this,' what a wonderful discovery this book was. Langston Braverman (and howz THAT for a great name for your character?) returns home (after a grim end to an affair and in the middle of her PhD orals) not for the usual reasons; she wants to get away from it all. But she find herself right in the middle of it all, the biggest 'it' being the death of her childhood friend and the fact that she's asked to help care for her friends deeply disturbed daughters. With great story lines, believable dialog, and revised Midwestern values, we read, compulsively hooked, as these troubled individuals struggle to find solace and peace. Wow, what a terrific book!
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