Reviews and Other Extravagant Praise for DEAR EVERYBODY
'Dear Everybody has the page-turning urgency of a mystery and the thrilling formal inventiveness of the great epistolary novels. Jonathon Bender's magical letters to the world that never wrote to him are at once whimsical, anguished, funny, utterly engaging and, finally, unforgettable.'
Maud Casey, author of Genealogy
'In Bender’s unsent letters of apology or thanks, Michael Kimball transforms the familiar into the strange again and the simplest confessions are made moments of sublime wonder. Hold on to this book.'
Christine Schutt, author of Florida and All Souls
'Michael Kimball's wise-hearted epistolary portrait of an endearingly honest, suicidal depressive is by turns hilarious and haunting--and always thrillingly deep, surprising, and pitch-perfect. Dear Everybody confirms Kimball's reputation as one of our most supremely gifted and virtuosic renderers of the human predicament. It's as moving a novel as I have read in years.'
Gary Lutz, author of Stories in the Worst Way and I Looked Alive
'I love this book, love the strangely detailed world that accumulates through letters, lists, yearbook quotes, and psychological evaluations. And I love the character of Jonathon Bender, the way he makes me so sad and also makes me laugh so hard. He will stay with me forever.'
Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties
'Dear Michael Kimball:
Thank you for this book. What Jonathon Bender writes in his unsent letters are what each of us longs to say, what all of us have been saying our whole lives, just not out loud.'
Stephen Graham Jones, author of Demon Theory and Ledfeather
'In his third novel, Kimball gives us the singular life of Jonathon Bender through a collage of different voices and sources and in beautifully rendered sentences. He mercilessly gives us a sense of the man and his trajectory, bringing us painfully close to Bender himself. This is a compassionate and compelling account of the quiet ways in which a life goes wrong.
Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain
Buy DEAR EVERYBODY in the UK.
The Author Bio, Written by the Author, But in the Third Person
Michael Kimball's third novel, DEAR EVERYBODY, will be published in the US, UK, and Canada in 2008. He is also the author of THE WAY THE FAMILY GOT AWAY (2000) and HOW MUCH OF US THERE WAS (2005), both of which have been translated (or are being translated into) many languages. Recently, Stephen King short-listed one of his stories for Best American Short Stories, as did Dave Eggers for Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has won a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Boswell and Johnson Award, and the Lidano Fiction Prize. He has also published many pieces in many literary magazines, including, mostly recently, Open City, Prairie Schooner, SleepingFish, New York Tyrant and Post Road. He lives in Charm City with his charming wife.
Dear Everybody; or, Excerpts from the Suicide Letters of Jonathon Bender (b.1967-d.1999)
Here is a short story called Excerpts from the Suicide Letters of Jonathon Bender (b.1967-d.2000) . It originally appeared in Post Road and then Stephen King shortlisted it for Best American Short Stories of 2007 and Dave Eggers shortlisted it for Best American Nonrequired Reading. Eventually, the piece grew into Dear Everybody, which comes out later this year--March 8 in the UK, September 8 in the US and Canada.
Reviews of and Other Extravagant Praise for How Much of Us There Was
'Michael Kimball never ceases to astonish. He is a hero of contemporary fiction.' Sam Lipsyte
'Be warned: this book has the power to make even the most hard-hearted of readers shed a tear. … Kimball has broken into new territory: How Much of Us There Was is one of the most graphic depictions of illness and loss I have ever read.' The Glasgow Herald
'This is the saddest book I have ever read and one of the most beautiful and unusual. A very old man wakes up in the night to find his equally-aged wife has had a stroke. Then follows a minuteto-minute account of what happens in the hospital and finally, his tender care for her back in their own home.
One can't help being aware of his grief and the great love he feels for his dying wife. It will make you cry and break your heart but this is one book you must read.' Telegraph and Argus, Betty Williams
'Not only does he address mortality head-on, but his narrator describes the deep and powerful love between his grandparents as his grandfather quietly and desperately watches his wife slowly dying. The grandfather’s narration is powerful and moving … uncomprehending and breathless.' Observer, Rebecca Seal
'A deep love between an ageing husband and wife is given a heartbreaking voice in Michael Kimball’s second novel, How Much of Us There Was. … Told through the eyes of the husband, the story is tender and poignant. His despair moves us because it is neither fantastic nor indulgent.' Time Out London, Mariko Kato
'Kimball has created something rare and brave in his second novel: the voice of an elderly man watching a beloved life slip away and with it the entire meaning of his own existence. … [It is a] beautifully tuned, near perfect account of a very ordinary death.' Metro London, Claire Allfree
'It’s easy to see why Kimball is held up as one of the potentially great literary hopes of recent times.' Book Munch, Chris Pickering
Buy HOW MUCH OF US THERE WAS in the UK.
What the Publisher Writes on the Back Cover So You Will Buy the Book
A husband wakes up to find that his wife has had a seizure during the night. An ambulance is called and she is rushed to the Intensive Care Unit at a nearby hospital, where she lies in a coma. By day he sits anxiously beside her. He tries to think of ways to wake her up. He brings familiar objects to her bedside – her books, her hairbrush, flowers from their garden. He talks to her. He exercises her limbs. At night he sleeps in the chair at her bedside, dreaming that she will wake up, so that they can go back home.
Years later, the story of this same slow death is re-told by their grandson. He wants to understand his grandmother’s life and death, what it meant to his grandfather, and what it means to him. He wants to understand the long and deeply loving marriage between his grandparents, and -- in his own words -- ‘how love can accumulate between two people over and through two lifetimes.’
How Much of Us There Was is a poignant, heartbreaking and ultimately hopeful novel from an extraordinary voice in American fiction.
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