Something Rising (Light and Swift)

The books that I’ve read by Haven Kimmel run the gamut between laugh out loud funny, break your heart poignant and I loved this book but I’m not 100% why. “Something Rising (Light and Swift)” was yet another different kind of book. It was beautiful in a brittle, heartbreaking way.

Cassie, the main character, is a girl, then a woman who is desperately and silently trying to hang on to those small and uncommon types of love that she has. Jimmy – her father, Laura – her mother, and Belle – her sister, give her very little love or affection in the traditional sense of the words. “Cassie was, at ten, a child who would have to learn to look away.”

She desperately loves her father despite being abandoned by him for much of her show more life. Her mother’s physical presence is a constant, yet Cassie knows very little about her. All through her life, it seems she is waiting for her father, so like her in spirit, to be part of her life, and for her mother, so unlike her, to tell her about her life.

Finally, once their lives start to change dramatically, Cassie gets part of what she wants as she starts to learn about the mystery that is her mother, Laura.

“…when you were three and Belle was five, I decided to leave your father, and Shirley was the first person I went to.” Cassie rubbed her forehead. How could she ever explain to Laura that hearing this story still caused a shimmer in her belly, she was still afraid that Jimmy and she’d lose her family so long after he’d left and she’d lost?”

Cassie’s feeling about her family – mother, father and sister are so conflicted, and so precisely written that she is one of the most real and knowable characters that I’ve read about in a long while.

“Cassie’s breath quickened, and she could hear her heartbeat. Jimmy still evoked elation and dread – she wanted to run to him before he got away, and she wanted to run past him and have it over with.”

She says very little throughout the book, but she feels so much – the reader is given a chance to know her more than she probably knows herself. Some of the choices she makes evoked a sense of protection in me…as if she was taking the first steps towards the paths of her parents and I wanted to warn her off. There was ferocity to Cassie that made me both fear for her and admire her.

I will always look forward to Haven Kimmel’s books – I won’t know what type of book to expect but I am sure it will be an amazing experience. show less

I really enjoyed this growing-up story of a female Indiana pool hustler. From her first pool game, Cassie finds everything she needs at the table, and it fascinated me how she applied the laws of physics to pool (I'm sure any good player does that, but I never thought about it before). I didn't find it distracting that I know nothing at all about pool; I thought it was explained as well as it needed to be for the story. I met Haven Kimmel at a book signing several years ago, and found her to be such an interesting person that I can picture her writing and narrating her books. A+ for this one.

Felt Like Homework: For a book about hustling pool, this book contains an awful lot of discussion about the role of feminine mythology in literature. This book felt less like a story than a justification of the tuition money spent on a Lit degree.

Not only is there the bizare out-of-place discussions about the protagonist's sister's college dissertation, but the book is chock-full of ham-fisted literary devices. I actually laughed out loud when Cassie won her father's prized pool que in a bet. Gee, what could that possibly be a metaphor for?

Early in the story, Cassie is instructed to study geometry and physics textbooks in order to understand pool. This made me wonder whether the author had ever seen a pool table or a geometry show more textbook. Most pool sharks don't need to know how to calculate the area of a tetrahedron. The amount of geometery that one must know to play pool well could probably be written in large letters on one side of a 3x5 index card.

The characters are dull and one-dimensional. Everybody dutifully plays their part without acting like an acutal person. We are treated to road-worn cliche characters such as the gay best friend, the absentee father, and the kindly grandfather. Cassie, the protagonist, is cold and unlikeable. She's like a Holden Caufield without the charm. I found myself wanting bad things to happen to her.

I suspect that my assignment was to analogize the Cassie character to some mythological godess that the author discussed. But it just wasn't worth the effort. show less

This book is Kimmel's attempt at the standard coming-of-age-in-a-dysfunctional-family trope, but even here she twists it almost unrecognizably. It begins fairly typically but strays further & further from the mold as it goes along. Like The Solace of Leaving Early, which I admired, this book is set in rural central Indiana, but whereas that one focused on an intellectual elite, this one is about more stereotypical rural Hoosiers who live apparently meaningless lives in a trailer. (But, of course, Kimmel again gives this a twist as we gradually learn that the main character's--a teenaged pool shark--mother writes poetry & her sister studies classical mythology.) I didn't connect with this one as much as her other one.

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.

Read more at http://badgerbooks.blogspot.com/2007/07/something-rising-light-and-swift-by.html

I honestly don’t know what to say about this one. I found it very uneven - parts of it I loved and thought were lyrical and magical. Parts of it I found so draggy that I had trouble sticking with it. I’ve put it on my keeper shelf for now because I want to try again after a little time has passed and see what my reaction is to a re-read. For now I give it a C-, but that is subject to change.

Someone who is not interested in the game of pool might find getting involved in this story a bit dificult. The characters, a young girl coming-of-age & her pool-playing mentors are not very likeable people. The setting, a run-down town in rural Indiana, is hardly inspiring. The plot rambles as the girl constantly challanges people to games of pool, winning & losing are seen as metaphors to her smoewhat chaotic life.
A relaxing read, though & the conditions depicted in the Indiana town are all too common in the rural mid-west.