- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Flamingo (17 May 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0007174128
- ISBN-13: 978-0007174126
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,864,504 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Something Rising (Light and Swift)
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Product Description
Review
‘Stark yet compelling.’ Vogue
‘What intelligence is here, and what grace, and what unsentimental (and contagious!) love for our messy ways here on planet Earth. Haven Kimmel is true gospel wearing bluejeans; you read her and you are lifted up.’ Elizabeth Berg
‘Gorgeously written and brilliantly conceived. “Something Rising (Light and Swift)” is touching and funny and warm and spirited.’ Augusten Burroughs, author of ‘Running With Scissors’
‘You’re going to love meeting Cassie Claiborne, the redoubtable girl at the heart of this wonderful coming-of-age story. She has it all – rebellion, grit, compassion, humor, and a perfect eye. Beautifully written, “Something Rising” is a wonder.’ Sue Monk Kidd, author of ‘The Secret Life of Bees’
Reviews for The Solace of Leaving Early:
‘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 mesmerizing, original characters. Ultimately, this is a love story, but the most subtle, original one I have read for years.’ Irish Examiner
Review
‘Stark yet compelling.’ Vogue
‘What intelligence is here, and what grace, and what unsentimental (and contagious!) love for our messy ways here on planet Earth. Haven Kimmel is true gospel wearing bluejeans; you read her and you are lifted up.’ Elizabeth Berg
‘Gorgeously written and brilliantly conceived. “Something Rising (Light and Swift)” is touching and funny and warm and spirited.’ Augusten Burroughs, author of ‘Running With Scissors’
‘You're going to love meeting Cassie Claiborne, the redoubtable girl at the heart of this wonderful coming of age story. She has it all – rebellion, grit, compassion, humor, and a perfect eye. Beautifully written, “Something Rising” is a wonder.’ Sue Monk Kidd, author of ‘The Secret Life of Bees’
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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First Sentence
On Thursday, in the middle of June, she waited for her father. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
On Thursday, in the middle of June, she waited for her father. Read the first page
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20 reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Her only serenity is an expanse of green felt
26 Dec 2003
Format:Hardcover
Haven Kimmel's 2 previous books were so disparate as to defy a reader's belief that the same woman could possibly have written both of them. Now, with Something Rising, we have the missing link: the Indiana setting we learned about in A Girl Named Zippy combined with a tough and conflicted protagonist like the girl/woman in The Solace of Leaving Early.
Cassie (short for Cassiopeia, not for Cassandra) Claiborne's coming of age process from a schoolgirl thru her teenage years and into sort-of-mature womanhood is chronicled within these pages. We see her struggling with a love/hate relationship with a mostly-absent but charismatic pool-playing ace of a father; interacting with a trapped, bitter, and disappointed mother who `could have married a rich man in New Orleans' but was already pregnant with Cassie; and coming to terms with a brilliant, odd, agoraphobic older sister. Cassie develops a tough shell as she becomes the supporter of her odd little family by working odd jobs but mostly by playing pool at Uncle Bud's bar and pool hall, but her fondest wish is to have a life of her own.
I found myself riveted by this book, pulling for Cassie's redemption as she set out to slay dragons in her mother's and sister's name. Only two things detracted from my enjoyment: the ending came a little too swiftly and was a little too neatly tied together, and, maybe it's me, but I just really, really didn't understand why she felt it necessary to whup (at pool, of course) the man her mother had been engaged to when the man who done her wrong came along. I mean, what did Cassie have against Jackson LaFollette, huh?
Cassie (short for Cassiopeia, not for Cassandra) Claiborne's coming of age process from a schoolgirl thru her teenage years and into sort-of-mature womanhood is chronicled within these pages. We see her struggling with a love/hate relationship with a mostly-absent but charismatic pool-playing ace of a father; interacting with a trapped, bitter, and disappointed mother who `could have married a rich man in New Orleans' but was already pregnant with Cassie; and coming to terms with a brilliant, odd, agoraphobic older sister. Cassie develops a tough shell as she becomes the supporter of her odd little family by working odd jobs but mostly by playing pool at Uncle Bud's bar and pool hall, but her fondest wish is to have a life of her own.
I found myself riveted by this book, pulling for Cassie's redemption as she set out to slay dragons in her mother's and sister's name. Only two things detracted from my enjoyment: the ending came a little too swiftly and was a little too neatly tied together, and, maybe it's me, but I just really, really didn't understand why she felt it necessary to whup (at pool, of course) the man her mother had been engaged to when the man who done her wrong came along. I mean, what did Cassie have against Jackson LaFollette, huh?
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Not as good as I hoped it would be....
9 Oct 2004
Format:Hardcover
I dearly loved Haven Kimmel's first novel, "The Solace of Leaving Early". It was one of those books whose ending was so utterly satisfying on so many levels, I felt lighthearted for the rest of the day after I finished it (having read until the small hours of the morning.) "That," I kept saying to myself, "was a darned good book."
So I was watching and waiting for "Something Rising (Light and Swift," ready to fall in love (or hate) with a whole new cast of characters. And so I read it, finished it, and closed the cover feeling puzzled and morose and saying, "Yes, but...."
I just didn't like it very much. There was an underlying scornfulness, a mocking of people, that I found unattractive, considering Kimmel's smartness and sweetness and gentle prodding humor when describing the weirdness of small midwestern Bible Belt towns in "Solace". One got the feeling that she was giggling slightly at her own solid midwestern core that has been covered over with the shiny veneer of being a Published Author.
But in "Something Rising," I just didn't get that sense. It's a bit hard to define. There was an edge -- and I presume Kimmel meant it to be there -- of razor-sharp ugliness about it. No tenderness. No healing. No comfort. Just desolation and despair.
It didn't make for a happy read. It probably wasn't supposed to. But I really hate the feeling of being left with a partially unresolved plot.
And I wish someone would explain to me the significance of the title. The esoteric meaning has apparently flown right over my thick-as-a-stump midwestern head.
So I was watching and waiting for "Something Rising (Light and Swift," ready to fall in love (or hate) with a whole new cast of characters. And so I read it, finished it, and closed the cover feeling puzzled and morose and saying, "Yes, but...."
I just didn't like it very much. There was an underlying scornfulness, a mocking of people, that I found unattractive, considering Kimmel's smartness and sweetness and gentle prodding humor when describing the weirdness of small midwestern Bible Belt towns in "Solace". One got the feeling that she was giggling slightly at her own solid midwestern core that has been covered over with the shiny veneer of being a Published Author.
But in "Something Rising," I just didn't get that sense. It's a bit hard to define. There was an edge -- and I presume Kimmel meant it to be there -- of razor-sharp ugliness about it. No tenderness. No healing. No comfort. Just desolation and despair.
It didn't make for a happy read. It probably wasn't supposed to. But I really hate the feeling of being left with a partially unresolved plot.
And I wish someone would explain to me the significance of the title. The esoteric meaning has apparently flown right over my thick-as-a-stump midwestern head.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Something's Rising and it has an off smell
15 Jun 2006
Format:Hardcover
Compared to Kimmel's brilliant first novel,"Solace..." this reads like a labored Writing Class assignment: "Write a piece about a woman pool hustler, and make her an angry, masculine, drywaller whose redneck mother alludes to Kundera, Randall Jarrell, Marianne Moore, Anne Sexton, Martin Amis in the space of 2 pages."
Kimmel has a thing about frustrated intellectual housewives (the mothers, Laura, here and Annalee in "Solace...") who never went to college yet worship at the alter of Thought and Literature. Usually one kid goes to Bloomington to become a neurotic pointy-head while the other makes meth in the barn or practices tire-iron road rage while Seeking The Absent Father. Throw in some depth psychology and pages of pointless and unbelievable STRIFE, and you eventually get to the end of the exercise.
The pasted-on New Orleans Good Ending is OK only because we can hope that Hurricane Katrina has wiped out Haven's fictional Pool Hall Heaven paid for by deus ex machina. By the way, Cassie, the lumpy heroine whose outlawry consists of having uninteresting pot-smoking friends and never paying income tax, supposedly inherits a $300G stock and insurance settlement and the lawyer hands it over in cash and takes out no taxes?
Haven needs to have people who aren't in awe of her to read the drafts of her future novels. She is way too talented to wing it just because she had a great first novel. She needs better advisors/editors.
Kimmel has a thing about frustrated intellectual housewives (the mothers, Laura, here and Annalee in "Solace...") who never went to college yet worship at the alter of Thought and Literature. Usually one kid goes to Bloomington to become a neurotic pointy-head while the other makes meth in the barn or practices tire-iron road rage while Seeking The Absent Father. Throw in some depth psychology and pages of pointless and unbelievable STRIFE, and you eventually get to the end of the exercise.
The pasted-on New Orleans Good Ending is OK only because we can hope that Hurricane Katrina has wiped out Haven's fictional Pool Hall Heaven paid for by deus ex machina. By the way, Cassie, the lumpy heroine whose outlawry consists of having uninteresting pot-smoking friends and never paying income tax, supposedly inherits a $300G stock and insurance settlement and the lawyer hands it over in cash and takes out no taxes?
Haven needs to have people who aren't in awe of her to read the drafts of her future novels. She is way too talented to wing it just because she had a great first novel. She needs better advisors/editors.
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