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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
"...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
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
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