The Solace of Leaving Early

Rating:
Summary: this book was so mediocre....sigh
Review: The best thing about this book is the title. It's a beautiful sentiment and one that was expressed well in one little vignette. Otherwise this book was so mediocre...OMG. It was bad. Simplistic. Saccharine. It was like reading the work of someone still in the first year grad writing program, as the main character reflects. Not only could you see the plot wrap-up a mile away, I sort of felt like I needed to take a shower afterwards lest I get attacked by a swarm of bees coming for the sticky sweetness.This book is a major pass unless you typically enjoy the recommendations of USA Today.

Rating:
Summary: You Won't Leave This Novel Early!!!!
Review: The highest praise I reserve for a novelist is to say that he/she reminds me of Anne Tyler. Haven Kimmel falls into that august category with her BRILLIANTLY rendered fist novel "The Solace of Leaving Early" which is at once a love story and an examination of the nature of grief.

Quirky and enduring characters populate Kimmel's small Midwestern town. One cannot fail to be moved by young Immaculata and Epiphany as they face their darkest days.

And ahhh the character of Langston! She is one of the most interesting, funny and aggressively irritating characters I've come across in a long long time. I hated to close the book on her.

This is one novel that you won't "leave early".

Rating:
Summary: A Completely Original Treasure
Review: The only thing better than reading this book is the absolute luxury of reading it a second time. The freshness of the story is unmatched, but it's the way Haven Kimmel puts the words together that took my breath away from the first page. The characters are amazingly well-drawn, and ultimately, it's easy to love them, in spite of their most human faults. Kimmel's background with a rural Indiana childhood and an education at a Quaker seminary are combined beautifully in Solace, and, along with the exceptional language and wonderful characters, there's a strong theological theme that literally changed the way I look at death. Reading Zippy right after Solace put Haven Kimmel in line with Anne Tyler, Lee Smith, and David Sedaris (find the common thread in that group!)as the authors I'll always want to read before their ink dries.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, original story
Review: The Solace of Leaving Early is a wonderfully intelligent, literate novel. The characters are original and well-drawn; I quite enjoyed spending time with them. I did find the ending to be a bit abrupt. I loved it, but it came too soon. I think this story could have gone on for another 50-100 pages and not have overstayed its welcome, thanks to the mega-talent of Haven Kimmel. I adored A Girl Named Zippy and look forward to Haven's next novel. I hope we don't have to wait too long!

Rating:
Summary: An Ancient Art
Review: The surprise of Haven Kimmel's The Solace of Leaving Early is not that it made me think and brood and cry, it was that a novel about philosophy, religion, social dysfunction and horrific loss could make me laugh so often.
Langston,the heroine, has a dog named Germane - as in "relevant". Her descriptions of the faculty archetypes in her novel are scandalous - and perfect. The residents of the town of Haddington are a riot and joyously real.
Kimmel has worked a kind of poetic alchemy where the monotony of mid-western America, the brutality of death and all it's associated guilt and trauma, and the labor of existential crisis are made molten with the beauty of her characters and prose and formed into a tale so precious and rare that, though you now own it, you covet it long after you've set it down.
I look forward to reading it again and again.

Rating:
Summary: No Skimming Here
Review: This book was such a pleasure to read. Some of the scenes are so real, for example, like the scene where Langston tries to help her mother AnnaLee (who is in panic-mode) prepare for a visit from her own mother. Although Langston gives her mother grief over the most minor things (like attending any social function) when push comes to shove Langston deeply loves her mother and sticks up for her. Isn't that just like family?

Of course, this book is about so much more than what I just described. In addition to the wonderful interactions between Langston and AnnaLee, this book reveals a goldmine of richly woven life experiences that often lead the characters down very unplanned life paths. I truly enjoyed reading every sentence in this book and would not even THINK of skimming sentences. This is one book worth its weight in gold.

Rating:
Summary: As good as it gets
Review: This is a love story -- two people in a small town in Indiana intersecting at the cataclysm of another familiy's tragedy. Kimmel plots their paths to this collision course masterfully, developing her characters and subplots, so when we reach the end, we may not be surprised at the outcome, but the way in which it occurs will always be fresh, no matter how many times we read the story. Some readers may find the literary references to an entire spectrum of classical writers and philosophers off-putting, but their context in the story is so marvelous, it should encourage the discerning reader to explore some of these writers for themselves. This one is a keeper!!

Rating:
Summary: Unlikely in the extreme
Review: This is a novel about domestic abuse and it's after effects on an entire community. What makes this more sensitive, is that the community is a very small town in Indiana and the people that live there have known each other for a lifetime.
The impact of the abuse is more personalized because of the familiarity of the townsfolk and the reactions of the surviviors more exposed and accountable. With domestic abuse comes grief, and grief can beget unresolved grief, which is ripe in this tightly knit clan from Haddington, Indiana.

Presenting a touching story of two little girls exposed to the brutal slaying of their mother, Author Kimmel allows the event to rip through the town's church where the guilt and grief card is played handsomely by Pastor Amos Townsend. The pastor is suddenly in charge of coordinating the future of the two traumatized children by the basically geriatric and infirmed relatives. Confronted with the prospects of adopting the children out, Pastor Townsend searches to work out a solution. Heavily leaning on Anna Braverton, fellow churchgoer and intellectual confidant, Amos struggles to provide guidance and compose sermons for his congregation in one of the most personally challenging periods of his life.

At the same time, Langston Braverman (daughter of Anna and Walt) aborts her PH.D. and all prospects as a university professor by walking out on her orals, packing up her dilapidated car and heading home with her faithful dog, Germane. She unexpectantly shows up at her childhood home, moves back into her attic bedroom and settles down to selfish moping. While she becomes aware of the little girls by studying them through her attic window, she decidedly refuses to hear the details of their mother's death, professing that it should be no one's buisness but their own. But, just like a small town, neighbor's lives get tangled, and despite all Langston's attempts to stay uninvolved, others work to make her a key player in the future of two tragically orphaned sisters.

Rating:
Summary: Sensitive novel about moving on
Review: This is a novel about domestic abuse and it's after effects on an entire community. What makes this more sensitive, is that the community is a very small town in Indiana and the people that live there have known each other for a lifetime.
The impact of the abuse is more personalized because of the familiarity of the townsfolk and the reactions of the surviviors more exposed and accountable. With domestic abuse comes grief, and grief can beget unresolved grief, which is ripe in this tightly knit clan from Haddington, Indiana.

Presenting a touching story of two little girls exposed to the brutal slaying of their mother, Author Kimmel allows the event to rip through the town's church where the guilt and grief card is played handsomely by Pastor Amos Townsend. The pastor is suddenly in charge of coordinating the future of the two traumatized children by the basically geriatric and infirmed relatives. Confronted with the prospects of adopting the children out, Pastor Townsend searches to work out a solution. Heavily leaning on Anna Braverton, fellow churchgoer and intellectual confidant, Amos struggles to provide guidance and compose sermons for his congregation in one of the most personally challenging periods of his life.

At the same time, Langston Braverman (daughter of Anna and Walt) aborts her PH.D. and all prospects as a university professor by walking out on her orals, packing up her dilapidated car and heading home with her faithful dog, Germane. She unexpectantly shows up at her childhood home, moves back into her attic bedroom and settles down to selfish moping. While she becomes aware of the little girls by studying them through her attic window, she decidedly refuses to hear the details of their mother's death, professing that it should be no one's buisness but their own. But, just like a small town, neighbor's lives get tangled, and despite all Langston's attempts to stay uninvolved, others work to make her a key player in the future of two tragically orphaned sisters.

Rating:
Summary: The Solace of Leaving Early
Review: Well I've read some of the other reviews and don't wish to just reiterate what they said. However I would like to comment on the ending without giving it away - it came from out of the blue and was really quite preposterous. I can think of a half dozen endings that would have been better, would have been more believable - actually I have seen X-Files episodes that were more likely. Or for that matter, it was nearly as preposterous as the story lines in the new series "Boomtown" and "Without a Trace" this season. Since when did fiction become "stranger than fact?"