Things Kept, Things Left Behind

Nothing Like An Ocean

Nothing Like An Ocean

Things Kept, Things Left Behind

Booklist

Nothing Like An Ocean
Tomlinson, Jim (author).
Mar. 2009. 176p. Univ. Press of Kentucky, hardcover, $24.95. (9780813125404).
REVIEW. First published March 15, 2009 (Booklist).

In his second collection, Tomlinson offers a series of stories set in rural Appalachia, writing movingly of people struggling to find happiness in lives dictated more by economics than sentiment. In the title story, a brother and sister attend a singles mixer and dare to consider a life beyond the shared tragedy of a child’s death; in another tale, a scarred Iraqi veteran forces an acquaintance to reconsider the sacrifices she makes for a small sense of security. There is also a mother who relies too heavily on her son’s coping ability and is missing his slide into drug abuse. In the book’s highlight, “Overburden,” Tomlinson strikes out into the Kentucky landscape itself, writing about the practice of mountaintop-removal coal mining as disastrous beyond repair: “The only thing that’ll stop them is when there’s none left to take.” This is a theme that also applies to his characters and to the patchwork drama that is America, as Tomlinson stakes a literary claim that is not only geographic but also emotional.

— Colleen Mondor

Early praise for Nothing Like An Ocean

“With his flawless ear for speech and great compassion and wisdom regarding measures of the human heart, Tomlinson drops us right into lives and situations that mesmerize and stun each and every time. Another fine collection from this very gifted writer."

~ ~ Jill McCorkle, author of Creatures of Habit: Stories

"Jim Tomlinson writes with direct language about people who have lost direction in their lives. He knows the pressures of life in a small community, the love of land, the cost of loyalty to family, and the confines of geography. With a vast scope including wars in Vietnam and Iraq, car dealers and high school teachers, this book never wavers from its profound embrace of humanity. There is no judgment here, never a shred of remorse or blame, but an honest depiction of frailty, yearning, and loss. The prose is compassionate and wise, the understanding deep. The people are real, and we all know them."

~ ~ Chris Offutt, author of Kentucky Straight

Major Reviews of Things Kept, Things Left Behind

Chicago Sun-Times

"Tomlinson's tales capture the desires and dreams of small-town, working-class America with heart, humor and a bit of sadness."

Mary Houlihan ~~ Chicago Tribune - January 14, 2007

New York Times

"In the tradition of many classic story collections -- from the Deep South back roads of Flannery O'Connor's short masterpieces to the sleepy towns of Huron County, Ontario, found in Alice Munro's exquisite work-- ...deeply rooted in a sense of place. [Tomlinson] skillfully packs suspenseful plot turns into these economical stories."

~~ New York Times - November 23, 2006

Hartford Courant

"Jim Tomlinson was in Middletown last spring as a teaching fellow in fiction at Wesleyan Writers Conference, but his natural habitat is rural Kentucky. His familiarity with life in small towns informs his first collection, Things Kept, Things Left Behind, but there's a more universal place he knows well. That is the country of marriage, visited here often and with insight."

~~ Hartford Courant - November 19, 2006

Esquire Magazine

"Jim Tomlinson's Things Kept, Things Left Behind--short stories that prove that the best fiction need not be more than sixty pages."

~~ Esquire Magazine - November, 2006

Kirkus Reviews

Starred Review -- Things Kept, Things Left Behind -- "a book of unusual merit"

Winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, this well-worked debut collection of 11 stories delineates life's wrenching milestones: divorce, moving, the death of a parent.

Tomlinson's protagonists, mostly citizens of rural Kentucky, are adults in various stages of transition, not quite sure where they're headed.

In the strong opener, "First Husband, First Wife," Cheryl has had two subsequent spouses but still can't break her connection with the baleful Jerry, who keeps getting her into trouble with the law. "The Accomplished Son" follows Polk, a young army specialist who returns home from Iraq with his pregnant wife. He's too late to attend the funeral of his father, wheelchair-bound for a dozen years after a gun accident that involved the town lawyer. The rage of war combined with a desperate urge to feel love for his unborn child sends Polk on a terrible mission to the lawyer's house, seeking revenge for the catastrophe that soured his father's life, and his own. The two stories that together form the title feature the same characters. "Things Kept" shows sisters Cass and LeAnn grappling with a crisis: They need to raise quick money to pay off the delinquent taxes their dotty mother owes on the family house in Spivey, Ky. LeAnn, who lives in Ohio, hatches the idea of selling Ma's antique desk to salesman Dexter Chalk, a former boyfriend with whom LeAnn happens to be having an adulterous affair. In "Things Left Behind," the lovers meet in a motel room out of a desperate need to feel in control of their careening lives. Alcoholic Dex is trying to stay sober, while LeAnn recognizes that the person who's changed in her marriage is not her narrow-minded husband, but rather herself. Like all of Tomlinson's characters, these two ring true and utterly human.

A wonderful collection notable for its clean prose and tone of quiet, stubborn dignity.

~~Kirkus Reviews - August 1, 2006

Publishers Weekly

Things Kept, Things Left Behind
Jim Tomlinson. Univ. of Iowa, $15.95 (170p) ISBN 0-87745-991-6

A rural Kentucky where pride and familial honor are sacrosanct, old flames don't extinguish quietly and secrets are hard to keep centers Tomlinson's debut story collection. In the finely wrought "Flights," a writer sits at his father's bedside transcribing the dying man's remembrances, but a cunning shift in perspective shows the real power they hold for the son. The companion stories "Things Kept" and "Things Left Behind" examine what can be salvaged in marriage and what can't. In the first, LeAnn McCray, one of eight children, is summoned home from Ohio by her sister Cass. Cass's plan to square their ailing mother's looming debts by selling off their dead father's valuable desk runs smack into their mother's unselfish love for him. In "Things Left Behind," LeAnn's lover, Dex, sees in her, and in his 187 days of sobriety, a future beyond the next week and his humdrum married life; LeAnn's controlling husband, Lonnie, feels his life and wife "slowly spinning away from him" and soon faces a choice of whether to let her go. Tomlinson frames the characters' rich vernaculars simply, and carefully sets the pasts they're desperate to reconcile and repair within bleak, unvarnished presents. (Oct.)

~~Publishers Weekly - August 28, 2006

Booklist

Things Kept, Things Left Behind
Tomlinson, Jim (author).
Oct. 2006. 170p. Univ. of Iowa, paperback, $15.95 (0-87745-991-6).
REVIEW. First published September 15, 2006 (Booklist).

Tomlinson, recipient of the 2006 Iowa Short Fiction Award, has crafted a debut collection around characters who cannot let go of their past, from a woman who finds herself trapped again with her first big mistake to a returning soldier who finally feels capable of exacting revenge for a long-ago family tragedy. Tomlinson’s characters struggle to escape their personal histories but are thwarted by a paralyzing inability to do so. In some cases, the history is not even directly their own but that of those they care about; still, the protagonists are deeply affected and unable, or unwilling, to recognize its debilitating effects. In the final story, an epistolary tale between two friends that covers more than four decades, Tomlinson directs his characters from young adulthood in the turbulent 1960s to retirement and an awareness that childhood aspirations have long ago collided with adult realities. Like everyone else in the collection, they must accept the way things are before they can change them.

— Colleen Mondor

"...headshots and heartshots..."

"A perfect collection of headshots and heartshots from a gifted, first-rate storyteller."

-- Jill McCorkle

"...a very specific and eye-opening version of...working-class rural America. [Tomlinson’s] care for these people and his generosity toward them are evident on every page."

-- George Saunders

"...an impressive book in a venerable series by a very talented new voice in American fiction."

-- Robert Olen Butler