The Year We Left Home

Written as a series of short stories all involving members of the same family ins small tow Iowa. the oldest daughter marries a man that is an alcoholic. the oldest son stays in town and struggles to run his own contracting business, another son strikes it rich in the tech boom after trying grad school for awhile, and the youngest daughter is disabled from a car accident her senior year of high school. great choice for AIR 2013. this rings very true. ( )

If I could give this 4 1/2 stars, I would. About 1/2 way through I was marveling at this book, and thinking maybe it was the book of the year, but the final 75pp or so flagged.

In any case, this is a wonderful multi-generational yarn, that focuses on particular family events from the early 70s to the 2000s. The characters are vivid. The events are recognizable but surprising.

The setting is Iowa (seems to be around Ames), and Thompson does a great job evoking the dutiful and plain life of the farmers, before industrialized / corporatized farming takes over.

( )

The Year We Left Home tells the story of the Erickson family, of Grenada, Iowa, in the last twenty-five years of the last century. Beginning with the wedding reception of the oldest daughter, Anita, at the American Legion Hall, and continuing, each chapter moving forward a few years and telling a self-contained story about a different member of the family, to end, where the children are approaching fifty. Jean Thompson writes with a clarity and an absence of fuss that is a pleasure to read. Each member of the family, as well as some members of the extended family, are beautifully brought to life, from Anita with her desire to make a success of having a family to Chip, the Vietnam veteran cousin who is having some trouble settling down. There's a quiet strength to this book, with its ordinary family trying to get by in a difficult and changing world.

That said, there are some flaws that marred my enjoyment of this book. Early on, there's a silly anachronism, where the family sits down to watch a show that won't be aired for another six years, which made me wary of believing the accuracy of the background of each chapter's events. Each story is very much oriented in time and place, so that careless mistake at the beginning had me doubting the authenticity of each story's setting. There's a sense in which this book is derivative of The Corrections; although they are very different in tone, there are enough similarities in a few of the characters to make comparisons inevitable, and The Year We Left Home is the lesser book. ( )

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson made a lot of sense to me. OK, what did I mean by that? This book is the story of the Erickson family living in a small town, Grenada in Iowa from 1973 to 1998. It also followed the life of a cousin named Chip. It reflected the religion,cultare of the area and the times. The chapters alternated with the different persons of the family who left home and those who didn't.

Being from Indiana, I can relate to hard working farm people like Aunt Martha and Norm. The book opens with the preparations of a funeral. Funerals and weddings and sometimes family reunions bring those who left home back. I am familiar with the local view that the outside world is a bit weird and scary.

Each character in this book has a traumatic event in their life and the book and you follow the character to see what they do after that. To me, this is true life, how many of us go through life without something terrible happening? I don't think that there has to be humor in this book. The real story is how the characters coped with what their challenges that beset them.

I thought this was a true and honest book. I recommend it to everyone who likes to read about families, especially in the Midwest. ( )

A moving saga of an average American family in the heartland of Iowa, we first meet them all at the wedding of the family's oldest daughter, Anita. Anita is the oldest, and the golden girl, the prettiest girl in her high school class. She was never much interested in school, but wanted to make a good marriage, have a nice house and to raise a family near to home. Her brother, Ryan, however, only wants to get out of the one-horse town of Grenada, Iowa and to make his way into the wider world. He is joined in that aspiration by his younger sister, Tori, on the cusp of adolescence and already full of attitude. The last brother, Blake, seems to share none of their malaise and just wants a nice, peaceful life close to home. Mom and dad, meanwhile are stead, hard-working citizens - the kind who are called salt of the earth and do, indeed come from long-standing farming stock.

Adding to the nuclear family is cousin Chip (Ray)Tessman, a recent Vietnam veteran, who clearly has a a un-Iowa looking outlook on life and Uncle Norm and Aunt Martha Peerson,part of a large extended network of Norwegian relatives wedded to their farm, backbreaking work and the old values of an agricultural community.

Beginning in 1973 and extending into the beginning of the 21st Century we follow these characters through their successes and tragedies and through the upheavals of the last 40 years. Dreams fall away, new dreams are realized, life goes on and despite everything, the family seems to endure and lives come full circle with redemption for all.

The characters in this novel are as real as they can be and their story is told with a poignancy that left me in tears at the end of the book. Shortlisted for the National Book Award, this book should be on everyone's reading list. ( )