Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

May 24, 2008

Kelly rated it:

This SO should have been a 4 star book. I loved the characters, as implausible as they are. (Really, really long example: Main character Langston is named Langston. She theorizes that she hopes her parents didn't name her after Langston Hughes as it would be ridiculous considering she is a white woman. She also mentions she's never asked her parents. Are you kidding me? You spend your life as a girl/woman named Langston, something you've most likely always been asked about and never heard anyone More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Apr 13, 2009

Tina rated it:

while it became predictable as to what the outcome would be about 1/4 way through I still enjoyed this story. The annoying thing about the book was that once I was 1/2 finished I couldn't get the thought out of my mind that this was written to be made for Hollywood. Still - I like some of the characters especially the children and AnnaLee the mother. She was a great strong character on her own, who was devoted to her kids without losing herself.

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 25, 2007

Rachel rated it:

After finishing this, I don't think I can live my life the same way I did before. I don't know just what's different, but it's meaningful. Everything I read today seems pallid and distant in comparison, remote from and indifferent to me. Haven Kimmel's characters are so true, and their feelings so vivid, that I might as well have that many new friends. I cried during and after this book, wept for the lacks in my life and the foolish (but really not) tenacity of my hope that those vacancies w More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Aug 23, 2008

Laurie rated it:

One of my all time favorite books EVER. By Haven Kimmel, an amazing author.

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Jun 09, 2008

Katie rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 12, 2007

Miriam rated it:

I borrowed this book mainly because I so enjoyed Haven Kimmel's memoirs, A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up off the Couch. I detected echos of Kimmel's own life in this book as well, as she clearly writes about what she knows best: life in a small town in Indiana, religious philosophy, family relationships, etc. The main characters are intelligent, loving people faced with crises involving careers, church, personal/family/community relationships, belonging, guilt, and grief. It shows how people More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 20, 2007

Claire rated it:

I cannot praise this book highly enough; the story is as fresh and witty as it is haunting and poignant. Haven Kimmel is an astonishingly gifted writer. The protagonists of this book are so real that they practically leap off the page. Langston Braverman is an elitist intellectual who escaped her small-town life for the world of academia, only to slink back home in disgrace after a bitter breakup with her professor boyfriend forces her out of the English department. Amos Townsend is a pastor More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 17, 2007

Joyce rated it:

Having read this book in two book groups, I know that lots of folks will disagree with me, but I think it is a brilliant look at the Midwest. Author Haven Kimmel gets Indiana and the whole Midwestern mindset. There's a hilarious scene in the town diner where Langston, Kimmel's alter ego, explains to Amos the pastor, that Hoosiers practice "applied thinking." I know many find Langston hard to like - she is so mired in her own little intellectual world that she completely misses the ma More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Ashton rated it:

This is an EXCELLENT book about a woman who leaves her Ivy league graduate education to return to her small town in Indiana. It really is about the ability to accept the life you are living and releasing notions of what you thought life would be. I esepcially liked it because the author, Haven Kimmel (a Durham native), went to seminary and weaves religious theories and ideas intellectually throughout the story. Finally, the main character's relationship with her mother shows how people with tr More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 05, 2009

Marvin rated it:

A miraculous book, but so heavy on theology, philosophy, literature, art, & the other liberal arts that it's a hard book to recommend to most casual readers. Nonetheless, I found it immensely satisfying & even laugh-out-loud funny in unlikely places. (One character recalls a lesson from a professor teaching Faustus who claims that Faust is sent to hell for being a bad reader!) The two main characters--alternating chapters are told from their viewpoints though not in their narrative voices--are a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 09, 2007

Rowan rated it:

It has beautiful language - some of the most painfully beautiful I've read - about faith and how to follow it. There were several passages that brought me to tears simply by the way words followed words. I was a bit disenchanted by the plot - it seemed to inch shyly along for the first three quarters of the book, and then tumble head over heels to a messy and dubiously believable ending. Absolutely worth reading for the language, though, and for the characterizations.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Alison rated it:

Freaking amazing. I have never read a novel before that so effortlessly combined philosophical ideas with everyday reality--plus it was heartbreaking in a GOOD way, if you know what I mean, and I hope you do. Plus, it's all about spirituality and faith in the face of human brokenness, and so few novels are respectful of religious belief. Also, Haven Kimmel can do anything with language, which makes me jealous. I have no idea if you would like this, but I loved it.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 13, 2010

Jeannie rated it:

Wow, I just finished "The Solace of Leaving Early" and it's pretty amazing. I read Haven Kimmel's book "A Girl Named Zippy", and really enjoyed it--very lighthearted and funny. This book is exactly the opposite--extremely complex characters that are well introduced and developed over the course of the story--but it is not lighthearted at all. It is a very deep story of famlies, and tragedies that scar the soul. Yet Haven did a remarkable job of letting us get to know Amos More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 30, 2009

Raya rated it:

This book was so good it made my head explode. This was, perhaps, one of the most fascinating and insightful books I’ve read in a long time. All at once, it is a love story, a philosophical discussion on life, faith, and religion, a commentary on family and small-town life, and somehow it works to create this amazing, AMAZING book that is lovely and thought-provoking. This book is full of contrasts, small-town versus city life, science versus faith, despair and hope, characters who, as the story More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 18, 2011

Carmen rated it:

Kimmel knows her way around the English language! Some of her paragraphs are like little poems, little fragments of memory. Sometimes she makes me laugh aloud. And the plot--hey, people, who cares if you can guess an outcome if you can't guess HOW the outcome will occur?? And you can't guess how two traumatized children will affect a brittle, selfish intellectual--or how she will affect them. And anyway, we read Shakespeare knowing exactly what's going to happen, and that doesn't stop us from r More...

0 comments like

May 01, 2010

Nancy rated it:

I really liked the story of the small town girl, Langston Braverman, returning home after walking out of her oral defense of her disseration (we don't find out until much later in the book why) and the confused preacher, Amos Townsend. Add to that the murder of Langston's childhood friend Alice (who Langston really doesn't know all that well) and the hints of Langston's brother who died? left? (we find out much later). The characters are well developed and likeable. The problem is that so m More...

0 comments like

Jan 15, 2012

Sarah rated it:

I enjoyed the complexity of this book. The characters each had surprising and difficult motivations that molded their present situation. Amos was an educated and almost jaded priest, trying to help those under his care, but tortured by his own mistakes. Langston was a broken and bitter young woman who walked out on her entire future for spite...finding herself in a seemingly bleak and impossible situation. The reason I didn't "really like" this book is because of Langston. She was More...

0 comments like

Jun 26, 2008

Brooke rated it:

Wow! It's seldom that I'll have a lot of praise for a 250 page book that takes 150 pages to get into (mostly because I give up after 50 pages). That said, with the reader knowing this book is S-L-O-W going, this is such a good book. It's sad and terrible and completely worthwhile.

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Sep 27, 2008

Deborah rated it:

For all the theological/philosophical dialog, you'd think that the plot would lumber, but it doesn't. There's something evocative and wistful about this book that examines the ways in which we change our lives and the way our lives inexorably change us.

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 17, 2010

Jane rated it:

I haven't given a book five stars in quite a while, but this one really grabbed me. Part of it may be due to coincidence. I had been reading some Paul Tillich essays and, frankly, not getting a lot out of them. I put them aside to read The Solace of Leaving Early and much to my surprise Paul Tillich was mentioned on page eight (followed by many more references to theologians and philosophers). It is a rare novel that can combine religious philosophy, small town life, and memorable characters More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 01, 2009

Annieb rated it:

While the religious philosophy was often beyond me, the author used it in service to the characters and their story. The main characters, a minister and a failed PhD student, become entwined by circumstances which erode their flawed and fragile attempts at self-protection and allow them to overcome their isolation and discover a place and purpose in their lives, and a connection with each other and those around them based more on their essential humanness than on their philosophical studies.
More...

0 comments like

Oct 19, 2007

Deirdre rated it:

DB gave me this one, and maybe I just read it at the wrong time, but I disliked the main character so much, that colored the whole book for me. She came off as so cold and disdainful, I just couldn't make the leap of faith.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 30, 2010

Sarah rated it:

Maybe? There are still things I'm not quite sure I understand. It felt to me that once the protagonist's semi-sordid-sad past was revealed, she suddenly transformed into a tolerable human being. And perhaps that's what the author intended. It IS true, in fact, that understanding a person is often the key to loving them. Hmmm. There was also quite a lot of theology/literary theory with which I am pretty unfamiliar; this served to muddy the waters even more. I'm not certain that the final " More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 28, 2009

Julie rated it:

When I read books for pleasure, I often do not actually open the book until I'm 10 minutes from falling asleep. So fast-paced, energetic novels are often my picks. But Haven Kimmel's writing is so breathtakingly beautiful that I can't put this book down, even though the story is almost painfully slow. I have much to learn from this author about writing.

**
I finished this book this afternoon on the shores of Lake Michigan. The beauty of Kimmel's writing now has ruined me. I hate More...

0 comments like

Feb 05, 2009

Kathy rated it:

I have strange feelings about this book. It was a little like swimming around in cold water and hitting warm spots every once in awhile. I Loved the girls, they were the highlight of the book for me, without them I would've given up on the book in the first half. I really liked Amos and Langston but I felt like sometimes they would go off on these philosophical rants that had very little to do with anything, it almost just seemed like the author needed to get out her two cents about certain thin More...

1 comment like

Aug 14, 2011

Deb rated it:

I read this book in June early in my summer vacation. When I finished it, I started right back at the beginning and read it a second time, this time with pen in hand to underline my favorite parts. I adore this book.

And yet I am hesitant to recommend it to other readers. Somehow I feel like this book was written for a reader just like me. Did you grow up in small-town Indiana? Did you belong to an Anabaptist church? Do you struggle with faith, theology, brokenness? Do you know p More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 23, 2010

Elly rated it:

There are some people who think they have all the answers-give me the people who have questions. They interest me.This incredible book is filled with fascinating and yes, delusional characters asking big questions about life. Theological and philosophical ideas are discussed. A minister, scholar,two orphaned children and a myriad of others all struggling to reach an ideal life or at least one they can cope with.There is an intimacy permeating this story, sometimes painfully heartbreaking and at More...

0 comments like

Jul 26, 2009

treehugger rated it:

Well, who the hell knew that Haven Kimmel, my new, most favoritest authors on the face of the earth, has been living in DURHAM, NC in my VERY OWN BACKYARD for the last several years?? OMG!! I'm starstruck :)

Finished - this book is SO weird, but Kimmel's way with words clearly shines through the quirky characters and subtle plot lines. I didn't LOVE any of the characters, but Kimmel's family seeps out of Langston's Mom and her relationship with her brother who leaves (much like Kimme More...

2 comments like

Oct 15, 2011

Gail rated it:

10/13/11
Likely scenario: Return the copy I have now to the library, buy my own at Nice Price Books and then reread it. I found it that well-written, startling, raw, lovely, broken. The three main characters are well-read in literature, philosophy and theology. Watching them try to live out the theories they not only read but can quote, and learn from the lives of writers, poets and their fictional creations as if they were real people worth learning from was...well, I could relate.

------

1 More...

0 comments like

Feb 25, 2011

Rachel rated it:

I read this because it seemed to get such great reviews. I kept reading, wondering what people saw in this book, and thinking that it must get better. The second half does get more interesting, but not enough to redeem the book. The main character, Langston, is so unlikable - not believable as a 30 year old woman to me at all. She seemed more like a whiny 15 year old kid who "shouted, then threw herself into her pillow and began sobbing" when her mother asks her to accompany her to More...

0 comments like