Something Rising (Light and Swift) by Haven Kimmel

I LOVED this book. Absolutely loved it. It started out strong, breaking my heart with little bone-deep truths and minute, mundane tragic moments. The middle was a little slower, but still solid, and it picked back up for a really nice finish.

Cassie stood, stretched herself out, then went inside for her backpack, which had been Jimmy's long ago when he had mistakenly thought himself a Boy Scout. This was a mystery to Cassie, how the true nature of a person can be so thoroughly concealed in youth that he does humiliating things. It meant Cassie herself could do them, and later someone would hold out the object--a dress, a party favor, an unsent letter--and convict her. She was trying to redeem the backpack.


The main character, Cassie Claiborne, is the daughter of a mostly-absent pool hustler father and a withdrawn, mourning mother. Her older sister, Belle, grows from an odd child into an extremely eccentric adult. Even as a child, Cassie is strong for her sister, for her mother, for her friends. When her father finally leaves for good, she hustles pool and works odd jobs to pay the bills and support Belle and their mother. In The Solace of Leaving Early, Kimmel reveals early on that Langston's brother Taos is gone, and that the circumstances of his absence are tragic, but it's not until nearly the end that the reader finds out what happened. The move works well, creating interest and slight tension without feeling like an obtrusively dangling carrot. In Something Rising, the lure is the knowledge that Cassie's father Jimmy will leave. It's not so much finding out why he leaves, but examining how his leaving resonates through Cassie's life, that makes this carrot worth chasing.

Cassie grows up angry, but in the end she finds a way to escape the trap her life has always been, and the journey is endearing and beautiful, though sad at times. The final task of Cassie's struggle to accept the truths of her life / upbringing was masterfully written and emotionally gripping. The most surprising aspect of the book, to me, was a one-line revelation of a small truth about a minor character that ratcheted up my respect for Kimmel's story-weaving skills to a whole new level. I can't say anything more than that, but I hope if you read both novels (and you should) you'll enjoy the moment as much as I did.



The groundhog was lying belly up. He'd been a fat little guy. Cassie studied his face:  dead. Also, his small, expressive hands, curled now:  dead. She put the shovel under him and felt that he'd--

"What is it, Cassie, do you know?"

--been turned to liquid. There weren't bones or organs to offer any resistance. The Pig Dogs had had a time with this one. She got the shovel under his back and tried to lift it; he was very heavy, in addition to being liquid, and he rolled off the end of the shovel and landed facedown.

"I'm going in, I'm not watching this. Take it across the road and over the fence. Drop it over the fence, Cassie, so those dogs can't get to it and bring it right back. Do you hear me?"

Cassie got the shovel under his belly and tried to lift him. He rolled off and landed on his back, and that was about all it took for Cassie to see what she was up against. Her shoulders strained and her back began to sweat. It wasn't his weight so much as the fact of him down at the end of the long shovel, and her up at the other end. She gripped the shovel in the middle of the handle, stuck it under the groundhog's back, he was maybe easier to lift this way, but he rolled off and landed on his belly. Simply by turning him over repeatedly, she'd managed to get him a few feet across the yard, so she did that some more:  turned him again and again, rolling him like a sausage in a pan. Belly up, belly down. They made it across the road and to the ditch, and putting him in the ditch was no good, Belle would know or the dogs would know. The sun was a violence against Cassie's back, sweat ran toward her eyes. She took off her T-shirt, wiped her face with it, then covered her hands and grabbed him by the paws, his front two in her left hand, his back two in her right. She turned herself sideways, spun around twice, then let him fly, across the ditch and over the fence. At the peak of his flight his back was arched like a high jumper's, his chin tilted regally, his arms and legs were loose in surrender. Cassie was, at ten, a child who would have to learn to look away.

Too bad I didn't see this cake before I got married!

Neat, huh? In reality, we wouldn't have been able to afford it, and our cheesecakes were better anyway since MB doesn't even like cake. But! It's still pretty spiffy.


I also liked this one, even though it has nothing to do with books:


I know a girl who lives in Minnesota, and she says that the cityscape is a pretty good representation of the skyline of Minneapolis.


In other news, I realize it's been way too long since I blogged any books. I've been reading, just not taking the time to write about what I've read.

When I went to San Francisco last month, I took a whole stack of books with me, just in case. One of the best choices I made, bookwise, was to grab Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the last minute. It got me through my short flight to O'Hare, my three-hour layover, and almost all of my four-hour flight from Chicago to San Francisco. I've read it before, but only once, and that was back in the summer of 2003. Since the movie is coming out next month, I figured it would be a good idea to re-read. I liked it very much, although, as last time, I felt like smacking Harry a few times for his overwrought and misplaced adolescent rages. And I still think Sirius's death was a cheap tearjerker move. She's got one more book in which to convince me otherwise.


On the way home, I was extra glad to have books when my flight got cancelled and I got rebooked for a 1:19 PM flight instead of the 6:35 AM flight I started with. I read Charlaine Harris's Dead Until Dark during my extremely long wait, and I liked it quite a lot. The heroine of this "Southern Vampire Mysteries" series, Sookie Stackhouse, is no Sunshine, but she's a good character. In some ways, she's similar to Sunshine, in that both are pretty ordinary girls--not geniuses, not knockout babes, not karate champions. Where Sunshine had a magical heritage, Sookie has a magical talent--she can read people's minds. Because of this, she has few friends and zero romantic experience. When she meets an "out of the coffin" vampire, things change, and before long, Sookie's trying to solve a mystery and stay alive long enough to figure out whether or not a vampire boyfriend is what she really wants.

My only objections to this story:  unnecessary (in my opinion) murder of a family member, even more unnecessary murder of a pet, and a vampire named Bill. My friend Tam, who gave me the book, pointed out that Harris was likely trying to create an alternate take on the stereotypical vampire tale. Instead of femmy glam vampires named Lestat or whatnot, she created a vampire who represented a typical 1870s American Southerner. I'm okay with that, but wish she'd called him Will or Liam or even William. I just don't dig the name Bill, having once had a horrible coworker by that name. Besides, it's hard to take a vampire named Bill seriously when I kept thinking of Terry Pratchett's Death calling himself Bill Door in Reaper Man.

Pressing through my misgivings about the name turned out to be worth it, and the story was really enjoyable. I was surprised but not incredulous when the murderer was revealed, which is always really nice in a mystery. There was also one really unexpected and funny moment where it is revealed that a certain extremely famous, dead but occasionally still spotted singer still kicks around as a creepy pet-fancying vampire. I'm definitely going to look for the second book in the series the next time I'm in the mood for a sexy mystery.


After I finished Dead Until Dark, I moved on to Haven Kimmel's The Solace of Leaving Early, which the bibliophile recommended to me a few years back and even gave me for my birthday in the hope that I would remember to read it. I finally remembered, and I'm glad I did. Though parts of it felt heavy and a little over-academic, Solace is overall a very sweet, very unexpected story. It's pretty clear from the very beginning which two characters are going to find themselves falling in love, but what happens in between was refreshingly different. With a protagonist (the somewhat oddly named Langston Braverman) who is at times almost unlikeable, it was surprising just how drawn in to the story I felt, and I think it speaks well for Kimmel's writing that she let Langston's fragility show through her outer eccentricities and overbearing academic-ness. On its surface, the story is a bit unbelievable, but in reality it works, and works well. It's not a book you'd turn to for a quick, light read, but next time you feel up for something that takes you a little deeper, I recommend giving this one a try.