Devin Murphy

A powerful story of a young Dutch boy coming of age at the beginning of WWII. Through Jacob's eyes we see the attraction of the Nazi's story and why he chooses to do many of the things he does as his family disappears one by one. Once he realizes the true horror of the Nazi's goal to purge the world of all the people they consider unfit, he searches for redemption and a way to come to terms with the devastation of the war both to Germany and to the rest of the world. Jacob is not easy to show more like and the author does not make a hero of this boy. The choices he makes are often thoughtless and cruel, but throughout his journey he recalls over and over the power of stories and how these stories bind us together and help us get through the dark times. show less

I wasn't totally enamored of this book. It was readable but, for my part, it's not going up with All Quiet on the Western Front or even All the Light We Cannot See as an example of war fiction. I had two fundamental problems with the story.

First, it's a coming of age story. Unfortunately, the focus on Jacob, the boy in question, is lost amidst the overwhelming recounting of the horrors of war. From cover to cover the story is an assault of death, torture, mutilation, etc. There's nothing show more inherently wrong with a story about the horrors of war...but then the author needs to own the fact that he's writing that kind of book and not freight that message on the back of a rather insipid boy growing a little backbone in the final 50 pages.

Second, the book is written as a retrospective from later life, yet the tone of the book has none of the maturity of age nor the mood of recollection about it. Given the ending, I would have expected a tone of, "I was a mindless sheep of a boy with dreams of glory until...," to permeate from the very beginning. It didn't. Most of the story is told almost as if it's present-day action. And, there is something about the short, choppy sentences that seems like a youth talking, even though I'm well aware that youth tend more toward run-on sentences.

Readable but not memorable. show less

It seems to be a trend to use third person limited narration that rotates amongst two or more characters. It is less common, and perhaps a harder feat, to have those multiple points of view, all from first person narrative perspective. This means that each character's voice must be separate and distinct or the reader risks frustration and uncertainty about the "I" who is directing the story at that moment. In Tiny Americans, Devin Murphy's newest novel, he develops his characters show more beautifully, making the rotating first person narrative structure seem effortless in this poignant and well-written tale of a dysfunctional family and the roads they travel away from each other and then back again.

Opening in 1978 with Terrance Thurber's attempts to teach his children, Jamie, Lewis, and Connor, about the natural world while trying to get himself sober, the Thurber family's world will soon be altered and re-ordered forever by Terrance's eventual abandonment of home and family. Told in chapters alternating mainly between the 3 siblings, the novel examines how this seminal event made each of them who they are as adults, probes where each was broken by their family's dysfunction, and traces those broken echoes through their lives. It is an introspective study of family, searching, and forgiveness. Sadness leaks through the chapters, which span 40 years.

The narrative, primarily character driven, is chronological but spotted with intentional gaps. The chunks of missing time don't seem important though as the characters are fully rounded by the moments the narrative does spend with each of them, connecting them to each other even when they themselves are not in contact. From the siblings' early explorations into the natural world to the contrasting ways they each cocoon themselves after their father's leaving, Murphy has written this very carefully, very precisely, and very beautifully. The novel is intricately plotted in its move from one sibling to the next sibling either a year or several years further on. It is a slow and deliberate, intimate, ultimately touching story of a family that has lost its way trying to find equilibrium and connection again, to repair themselves, and to find forgiveness. show less

This book kept my attention throughout, which is more than I can say for a lot of books! What's interesting is that really the lives portrayed by the Thurbers aren't that unusual. Yes, the parents are wildly dysfunctional but so are the majority of parents. As I thought about the book after I finished, I thought what was the point? But realized that even though each of the characters had extreme difficulty in communicating they still marched forward through life. The end gave the reader hope show more that many of the open childhood wounds would be healed. show less