Alone in the Company of Others: A Novel

by Kelly Huddleston

With a cast of eccentrics that rivals "The Royal Tenenbaums", ALONE IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS is about people and their treasured possessions, and the distinctive role that each of us plays as part of a group dynamic. The book questions where each of us essentially exists — within the singular, the plural, or both.

Genres: Fiction

424 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 25, 2009

About the author

Kelly Huddleston is the author of the novels A WEEK WITH FIONA WONDER, ALONE IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS and THE PERFECT PEARL. Her work has been called original, accomplished and well-crafted.

Reviews

[Donald O'Donovan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alone in the Company of Others by Kelly Huddleston is a book for readers (I count myself among them) who believe that the journey is at least as important as the destination. Alone is neither a page turner that we must gobble up as quickly as possible nor a whodunit that requires the exercise of our armchair sleuthing skills, but rather it is an invitation to linger on the page, savor the moment, surrender to the flow and let Huddleston’s exquisite music wash over us and through us. A friend of mine who read a few pages of Alone complained that it was confusing, and I admit that at times Huddleston seems to be throwing handfuls of confetti at the us—I mean the rapid succession of characters and events, like wave after wave of soldiers storming a beachhead, but as we read on we discover that these multicolored bits and pieces of information are actually threads that resolve themselves quite readily into a tapestry that is artfully and intricately interwoven.

The novel is narrated by Huddleston’s alter ego, the nubile heroine Camille who is in love with her hunky cousin Russell. Camille lives in a household of great talkers, a regular Greek chorus of them, in fact: Connie, Camille’s mother, who is “nothing but a gear-grinding machine spitting out vowels,” Nurse Regina, who spends “a great deal of time misquoting famous dead people,” the Triplets, who have their own special language ”full of slurred vowels and biting consonants,” Wanda, a voluble veterinarian, and the novelist Andrew, who declares that “squid fishing is a religious experience.” Cousin Wilsie is the family historian. In lieu of talking, he records everything others say on a toy tape recorder and scribbles his own comments on a hand-held blackboard. Huddleston’s Greek chorus is topped off by Duck-Duck, a mute girl who doesn’t speak at all.

The author’s orchestral treatment of her material is not limited to her characters and their voices, however. It includes iconic objects such as Teresa’s paperweight dove that killed the voyeur Dennis Goody and Clive Hutch’s gold-plated bowling ball, and themes (before and after the fall, “cousin lust,” hitchhiking men), and all of these interwoven themes, characters, objects and voices come and go like motifs in a symphony.

Huddleston, in this superb non-linear novel, displays an adroit handling of shifting timelines without resorting to cumbersome and patronizing flashback devices. We can easily lay our hands on plenty of novels that follow the familiar conventional linear structure, but a large percentage of these books are unreadable because their sentences are stacked one on top of the other like wooden planks. We don’t want wooden-plank sentences whose sole object is to move the characters and the reader from point A to point B because this sort of thing is dull and formulaic. A literary novel—and Alone is unquestionably a literary novel—must have texture. It must have patina. It must have style. The words must dance and sparkle and cavort as well as carry the story forward. And in Alone we have it. Word-magic, I mean. Kelly Huddleston unfurls her lyric weaponry on every page, without fail.

Huddleston’s precocious heroine-narrator, Camille, the spideress who weaves this magical web, is engaging, literate, quick with her thoughts, sassy and thoroughly unconventional. In other words, she’s good company. You want to stick around while she works the pedals of her loom. You want to hang out with her, to linger on the page, to savor the moment, and consequently, you don’t want this book to end. Alone in the Company of Others does end, of course, and the ending is brilliant, but that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Alone in the Company of Others, by Kelly Huddleston. Read this book. Savor it. Linger over the pages as you would linger over an exquisite meal shared with good friends.

Donald O’Donovan

[Joyce · Rating 5 out of 5]

- See all my reviews
By Joyce Norman, author/publisher

As an author, I find myself having great expectations when I begin any new novel. However, the majority of times I soon discover that a book doesn't live up to its promises and it's usually never finished.

Well, look out! I've just closed the back cover on a novel that went way beyond my "great expectations" to a place called, "Where has this great author been?" As the book is written by a young woman in her 20's, I suppose the answer would be, "She's been growing up" and she has grown wonderfully into a world-class author who possesses the ability to turn names lying flat on pages into real, multi-dimensional people, given them something to say worth reading about and simply captivates the reader.

Kelly Huddleston has not written an easily read novel. She has written an intricate piece of work that lets you know there are still excellent storytellers left in the world with an innate gift of craftmanship. Huddleston's way with words sets her apart from almost any new novel on the market today. While sometimes a bit verbose in descriptions, the author quickly brings the reader back to the business at hand.

My favorite literary vehicle in this book is Wilsie. With such an innocent little name, this character acts as the Chorus in a Greek play. With a toy tape recorder, Wilsie chronicles everything that goes on in the house -- without speaking he becomes the historian in the novel.

No doubt this is not an easy read. However, it is worth every page you turn. It's not often you come upon a real, honest-to-goodness exceptional new author whose works will be around for a very long time. Writing talent? Huddleston has it!

[David Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complex and well written, Alone in the Company of Others by Kelly Huddleston explores the eccentricity of group dynamics with humor and insight. The characters in this book come alive and stay with you long after you close the book. Kelly Huddleston is a major emerging talent. Her stories are subtle yet poignant and speak to a part of us that we usually keep hidden safely away. This is a novel to be read and read again.

[Connie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am the 9th reviewer and will not give it the same high rating as those who have gone before me. The writing was fine, the content awful. For the record I read about half way and gave it up.