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pr727's review
1.0
I gave up on this book, not at all my cup of tea. I found it disjointed, the characters and story unpleasant. I read mostly non-fiction, enjoyed Kimmel's memoirs but not her fiction.
klarastan's review
1.0
I think I'll add Haven Kimmel to my Anne Lamott shelf: authors whose memoirs I love to death and whose fiction I find just absolutely atrocious. I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for The Solace of Leaving Early. But after that - Ms. Kimmel, what happened?
sausome's review
2.0
This is one crazy, messed up story. Much of the time I really didn't have a clue what was actually going on or why something was happening. Obviously there was something in the novel/writing because I continued to read it until the end, but on the whole, I'm fairly baffled by the whole thing, and more than a bit disturbed. I don't know, maybe among the incestuous fantasies, the constant cold and inability to be warm in the squatted farmhouse, the poor abandoned dog who only loved and wanted to be loved, the weird "Rosemary's Baby"-like dream sequences in a basement tied to a barber's chair surrounded by church people trying to exorcise demons, the people who weren't really there . . . I could go on. While fascinating for it's bizarreness, everything was a bit too dream-like to hold itself strongly together as one story. I went on a walk after I finished it, and reflected, and couldn't help wondering if I was really on a walk or only dreaming it or having a detached-like seizure as Trace did -- what is real and what is dream? Very existential, almost to a fault.
lyonsferocious's review
3.0
F*cking love Haven Kimmel, but finished this book feeling weirded out, confused and a little sick. I think that might have been the goal? The prose was food for my theory driven academic brain - particularly awesome if you've read a lot of Freud (whether you loved him or hated him) or other psychological and dream theory. The new wave/goth aesthetics were icing on the cake. Not as good as "The Solace of Leaving Early" but still quality.
karieh13's review
3.0
“Iodine” is extremely different than the other books I've read by Haven Kimmel. I've read the stories about her childhood with a mixture of laughter and awe and I've read the other fiction works with admiration of her beautiful prose.
This book..this book is a bit like tracing your finger through a pile of clear glass shards. They are beautiful as they reflect the light and the feel is cool to the touch...but every once in a while, a shard cuts deep underneath the skin, slicing clean through and drawing tiny drops of blood.
I'm not 100% sure exactly what happened in this book, but given the narrator, I think that's the point. There is a river of sadness and uncertainty and fear and desperate love flowing from the very first words, with an undercurrent of constant pain.
“Trace got in her truck, slammed the door a second time. Dusty was still standing on the porch. She twitched once, and eloquent lift of the shoulders that was, for Trace, the sum of every individual loss.”
This young woman's story contains so many unknowns, even to her. Sometimes it is as if she is living several lives at once, sometime she appears to not even be living her own. Her attempts to move away from her past prove heartbreaking. Every experience seems tied to her past and even new people she meets seem determined to pull her back.
When she meets Jacob, a professor at the university from which she is close to graduating, events seem to come to a head. This man, who seems to represent her future, takes her yet again back to the emotions of her abusive past.
“This was a man who was a physician of the secrets buried in texts; he peeled away old layers and fabrications; he tore down the moldy velvet theater curtain and exposed the bare stage and then told those dull and witless children in his classes that the stage was true, it made life worth living, it was the floor of civilization.”
Trace, a young woman so unsure of the facts of her own past, becomes entangled Jacob's...to her own further detriment. “He had been motionless before the question and he remained motionless, and yet every atom in the room shifted, scattered so as not to be seen.”
I know there was so much that I missed in this book. I am sure that I will re-read it someday and find some further insight into this character, this story.
But for now, I simply admire the beautiful shards of words and emotion, and wonder at Kimmel's grace at bending the light.
This book..this book is a bit like tracing your finger through a pile of clear glass shards. They are beautiful as they reflect the light and the feel is cool to the touch...but every once in a while, a shard cuts deep underneath the skin, slicing clean through and drawing tiny drops of blood.
I'm not 100% sure exactly what happened in this book, but given the narrator, I think that's the point. There is a river of sadness and uncertainty and fear and desperate love flowing from the very first words, with an undercurrent of constant pain.
“Trace got in her truck, slammed the door a second time. Dusty was still standing on the porch. She twitched once, and eloquent lift of the shoulders that was, for Trace, the sum of every individual loss.”
This young woman's story contains so many unknowns, even to her. Sometimes it is as if she is living several lives at once, sometime she appears to not even be living her own. Her attempts to move away from her past prove heartbreaking. Every experience seems tied to her past and even new people she meets seem determined to pull her back.
When she meets Jacob, a professor at the university from which she is close to graduating, events seem to come to a head. This man, who seems to represent her future, takes her yet again back to the emotions of her abusive past.
“This was a man who was a physician of the secrets buried in texts; he peeled away old layers and fabrications; he tore down the moldy velvet theater curtain and exposed the bare stage and then told those dull and witless children in his classes that the stage was true, it made life worth living, it was the floor of civilization.”
Trace, a young woman so unsure of the facts of her own past, becomes entangled Jacob's...to her own further detriment. “He had been motionless before the question and he remained motionless, and yet every atom in the room shifted, scattered so as not to be seen.”
I know there was so much that I missed in this book. I am sure that I will re-read it someday and find some further insight into this character, this story.
But for now, I simply admire the beautiful shards of words and emotion, and wonder at Kimmel's grace at bending the light.
ichirofakename's review
5.0
This is undergrad chicklit, typically self-indulgent, but, atypically, superb. Highly recommended specifically for English majors, even more for female English majors. Delusional but brilliant senior, on the lam, gets involved with professor, both have gothic terror-pasts. Not a happy family.
_mallc_'s review
4.0
This book is insane. I am currently completely spooked. The book really sneaks up on you. One minute you think "oh, okay, this is a little strange but you know she's probably right about it after all she's really smart" and then WHAM.
ryrosmiles's review
4.0
It was cool. At first I didn't care much for it, but then after about 70 pages I was like, "alright, I see what's happening." It's probably a book I'll read again, somewhere down the line.