Rating: 
Summary: Cassie Rises to the top
Review: Cassie is the kind of protagonist about whom young women need to read. She is strong, brave, daring, and loyal. Those qualities add up to an extraordinarily readable story. The supporting cast of characters are all interesting, and may well exist next door to any of us. I was cheering for Cassie all the way.
Rating: 
Summary: Her only serenity is an expanse of green felt
Review: 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?
Rating:
Summary: Haven Kimmel is a national treasure
Review: Her first book Zippy was a Today Show pick, but it is this novel which shines brightest in what is sure to be a long and brilliant career. Something Rising is studded with the kind of characters that seem to emerge whole from the pages: Puck, Jimmy, and of course Cassie are so real one feels they could touch them -- and we in the reading are surely touched. Cassie's redemption is a fierce will and the gift her father passed along: pool (billiards to the brits). The story is so compelling and funny and sad that it briskly engulfs the reader in a tide of lyrical bliss. Laura's speech about the Holiness of Love is surely one of the finest to ever grace my eyes. The novel is a mystery as well, careening through some agile plots twists until its grand finale. Brilliant, absorbing, tender, and uniquely satisfying, Ms. Kimmel has triumphed again.
Rating:
Summary: Another Winner from Kimmel
Review: I became a fast fan of Haven Kimmel's after reading "The Solace of Leaving Early". Her characters are so quirky that they fascinate as well as entertain me...even when they can also be SO annoying!"Something Rising" is not disappointing and I'll be first in line to get her next novel. I ESPECIALLY loved how, for "Solace" lovers, the character of Taos, the enigmatic missing brother, resurfaces here in "Something Rising"...you'll miss it if you aren't paying attention! Good going, Haven! Readers love stuff like this!
Rating:
Summary: Another Winner from Kimmel
Review: I became a fast fan of Haven Kimmel's after reading "The Solace of Leaving Early". Her characters are so quirky that they fascinate as well as entertain me...even when they can also be SO annoying! "Something Rising" is not disappointing and I'll be first in line to get her next novel. I ESPECIALLY loved how, for "Solace" lovers, the character of Taos, the enigmatic missing brother, resurfaces here in "Something Rising"...you'll miss it if you aren't paying attention! Good going, Haven! Readers love stuff like this!
Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as I hoped it would be....
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Willa Cather meets Pat Conroy..
Review: It's been a long time since I've read a book as good as Something Rising. What strikes me as immediately pleasant and refreshing is the fact that it has a timeless quality - the small towns, the simple lives, the beauty of a good story well told. There are no ambitious husband-seeking female characters, no thinly veiled and politically correct "messages", no references to designer clothing or celebrities. Her simple style is reminiscent of Willa Cather, yet the bursts of the human comedy and the unique yet 'ordinary people' characters remind me of how Pat Conroy hooks in a reader. Yet Kimmel's voiceis her own and it shines with an elegant subtlety, her dialogue is flawless. Characetsr liek BuenaVisa and Puck and Belle keep this book firmly on the sacred groundof Truth. Laura has many of the best lines and the kind of elder wisdom that is rarely seen in today's novels. It is simply and extraordinary book and I hope it gets the recognition it so richly deserves.
Rating:
Summary: Everybody into the pool
Review: This is not a novel about pool, but it does revolve around a young woman's only connection to her charming but absent father: billiards. This compelling story is stuffed with characters that you simply cant get enough of: Puck, BuenaVista, and of course Cassie herself and her family of women. Her sister Belle is going one way -- toward success and accomplishment? - her mother is a Greek tragic figure with a pack of Camels and a heart that still understands love -- and Cassie goesout into the world to kick a little ___. Well done and so magical to enter her world, Kimmel has triumphed here with exquisite grace and plenty of humor.
Rating:
Summary: Didn't quite hit the mark for me...
Review: This was one of the very few books that I was not able to finish. Not because it's awful, or poorly written...actually, I thought it was written quite well, which is why I'm giving it 3 stars. Its just that I didn't get it. After getting more than halfway through this book I realized...I didn't care about any one of the characters, I didn't care what happened to them, didn't fully understand who they were, nothing at all. I skimmed the last 1/3 of the book just to see if it would get a little more exciting...it never did.
Cassie was likeable enough, but I found her to be to hard and empty, and her sister Belle obviously had some serious problems, but what they were I couldn't tell you. And Puck and Emmy...what a bizzare pair. What it comes down to is this book just wasn't for me. The reading is extremely choppy, and difficult to follow in some places. What I got wasn't quite what I expected when I started reading. It's not that I don't recommend the book, I personally didn't take to it, but I really like Haven Kimmel, and have high hopes for the next book of hers I pick up.
Rating:
Summary: Not much plot
Review: When I was in college, I happened to pass by one of the English professors (a well regarded poet in his own right) as he was talking to his companion about "the banality of plot." Now that I too, am a writer, I know what he means. Real life has no discernible ebb and flow. Things just happen, and these things rarely make sense. Fiction has to make sense, and plot is inherently unrealistic. But let us not forget that the real is usually boring, and boring books do not rise to the top of the best seller lists. Cassie Claiborne is an intriguing heroine, but this book is boring. Too real? Maybe, but certainly there are too many words wrapped around too few incidents, and long drawn descriptions of people, places and things, descriptions that have little to do with the story. The story is interesting enough, but it could have been told in no more than half of this already thin volume.
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