The Used World: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Haven Kimmel
Publisher: Free Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 121302
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0743247795
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780743247795
ASIN: 0743247795
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
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Product Description
"It was mid-December in Jonah, Indiana, a place where Fate can be decided by the weather, and a storm was gathering overhead." So Haven Kimmel, bestselling author of A Girl Named Zippy, prepares us to enter The Used World -- a world where big hearts are frequently broken and sometimes repaired; where the newfangled and the old-fashioned battle it out in daily encounters both large and small; where wondrous things unfold just beneath the surface of everyday life; and where the weather is certainly biblical and might just be prophetic.Hazel Hunnicutt's Used World Emporium is a sprawling antique store that is "the station at the end of the line for objects that sometimes appeared tricked into visiting there." Hazel, the proprietor, is in her sixties, and it's a toss-up as to whether she's more attached to her mother or her cats. She's also increasingly attached to her two employees: Claudia Modjeski -- freakishly tall, forty-odd years old -- who might finally be undone by the extreme loneliness that's dogged her all of her life; and Rebekah Shook, pushing thirty, still living in her fervently religious father's home, and carrying the child of the man who recently broke her heart. The three women struggle -- separately and together, through relationships, religion, and work -- to find their place in this world. And it turns out that they are bound to each other not only by the past but also by the future, as not one but two babies enter their lives, turning their formerly used world brand-new again. Astonishing for what it reveals about the human capacity for both grace and mischief, The Used World forms a loose trilogy with Kimmel's two previous novels, The Solace of Leaving Early and Something Rising (Light and Swift). This is a book about all of America by way of a single midwestern town called Jonah, and the actual breathing histories going on as Indiana's stark landscape is transformed by dying small-town centers and proliferating big-box stores and SUVs. It's about generations of deception, anguish, and love, and the idiosyncratic ways spirituality plays out in individual lives. By turns wise and hilarious, tender and fierce, heartrending and inspiring, The Used World charts the many meanings of the place we call home.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Redemptive August 20, 2008
I loved the female characters in this book and their relationships with each other, and I was glad to reconnect with Amos (from THE SOLACE OF LEAVING EARLY). The more Haven Kimmel I read, the more I associate the word "redemptive" with her. Her characters have messy lives, but they manage to find their way, however imperfectly, to something fine, something good, something worth living for. It's true (as some reviewers have pointed out), that the story isn't completely linear and includes some digressions, but I like a book that keeps me on my toes.
 The Overused Stereotypes And Plot Devices May 24, 2008
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
I admit I have only read one other of Haven Kimmel's books, THE SOLACE OF LEAVING EARLY, and I enjoyed that and thought it was well written with believable characters. Though THE USED WORLD has the same setting (apparently a fictionalized Muncie, Indiana and its surroundings) and Church of the Brethren minister Amos (and very peripherally his wife Langston) who are major characters in "SOLACE" also appear in this effort the books are quite different.
This book is filled with melodramatic, unbelievable plot lines, some borrowed from other sources, and characters who are either misunderstood, mistreated saints or the most awful caricatures of rural Midwesterners. In fact Kimmel writes with such utter contempt for those who shop at WalMart, eat at McDonalds and attend large fundamentalist churches that it was often difficult for me to continue reading. I will believe Kimmel has met and even known people from rural Indiana who commit these just mentioned transgressions but she seems to be unable to convey any empathy for or write about such individuals with any genuineness or respect for them as fellow humans.
Some portions of the book are well written enough but other segments are awkward and unclear and a little editing and rewriting would have been beneficial. A pet peeve of mine is how invisible rural working class Americans are in today's mass media. I do appreciate Ms Kimmel setting her book(s) among the ordinary folks of rural Indiana but I am disappointed by her inability to see beyond the usual stereotypes of residents of such areas at least in this novel.
 A tad stereotypical **SPOILERS** March 26, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Despite being billed as a tender look at small-town Indiana life, this book succumbs to a host of cliches, and, indeed, seeems to despise everything about the Midwest except the subversive or liberal people who live in it.
* If there's a religious fundamentalist, he will not only be a hideous cultist who repudiates his pregnant daughter, but he will turn out to have cheated on his wife, brain-damaged his lover's husband, and contributed to two deaths--three if you count the baby his lover tries to abort.
* If there's a tall, non-feminine woman, she will turn out not only to be a lesbian, but will be good at basketball as well.
* If a couple has a framed print of "Footprints" on their wall, they will turn out to be shallow, bland, and callous and will try to have their grandchild aborted.
* If there's an artistic boyfriend, he will turn out to be a loathsome, cheating, immature slob who nearly kills his pregnant girlfriend through neglect.
* If there is, by some chance, a nice Christian pastor, he will state that the Nativity is practically meaningless and there is no historical proof of the Resurrection. (So become a Unitarian already!)
All this is disappointingly sterotypical, but would be more bearable if Haven Kimmel did not seem totally unaware that she has rescued her lovely character Rebekah from an oppressive father and an oppressive boyfriend, only to consign her to another oppressive relationship: Since Rebekah shows no signs of preferring women anywhere in the book, why are we supposed to rejoice that she now seems fated to be Claudia's lover? Give the woman some autonamy!
I kept deleting stars as I wrote this review. Kimmel is skilled with the words, yes, and I read this book determined to like it because The Solace of Leaving Early was gorgeous. But she could really benefit from an editor who would steer her into originality and add a few "and's" to sentences like "She opened the door, stood in the room." That particular sentence structure, repeated throughout the book, got old fast.
"What feels like the end of the world never is." February 13, 2008
23 out of 27 found this review helpful
Once in a while you read a book that's so multi-layered and absorbing, you just don't want to let it go when it's finished. "The Used World" is one of those books. Other reviewers have said that they finished this book and started straight over again at the beginning, and I can see why: you have the feeling that it's so full of riches, you haven't done it justice with one read.
"The Used World" follows the threads of three women's stories and binds them together into an unexpected and unusual present. Everything you assume about love and family is shaken up and reinvented.
Hazel Hunnicutt, a woman in her sixties who lives alone with her cats, is the proprietor of the Used World Emporium, a warehouse-and-barn full of wares carrying the weight of the past. In flashbacks we learn of Hazel's love for her childhood friend Finney, a girl full of light and fun. The story of Finney's self-destructive love and its sad outcome are an undercurrent to Hazel's present.
Hazel's employees are Claudia and Rebekah. Claudia, forty years old and mourning the death of her mother, is a freakishly tall woman forever disenfranchised from the joys others take for granted.
The younger Rebekah is a refugee from a fundamentalist church, disowned by her family, pregnant by an immature young man who left her for a college girl.
Into this mix come a baby, a dog, a gentler church, some wild sisters, and the unbearable weight of past intentions and actions. Though the redemptive outcome of all these forces is never assured, ultimately there is the chance for more peace than these women have known in their troubled lives. They don't get there easily, but they do get there.
The story is simple but the structure complex, the writing magical. The characters, including the cast of supporting players, are so finely drawn that it took my breath away. About baby Oliver who had kicked his blanket over his head, Kimmel writes: "... Oliver had become so distressed he'd kicked his blanket up over his head. 'What a problem,' Claudia said, uncovering him and lifting him up, his little body still such a surprise in her hands. How could something so insubstantial bear within it Oliver's nature, his character, everything that would compel him into adulthood?"
These three women spent much of their lives on the outside looking in, an isolation Kimmel illustrates again and again with scenes that ring so true. About the young Hazel visiting her friend Finney's family on Christmas Day: "What a treasure they were, these people for whom cakes collapsed, sleepy, normal people who worked hard and loved their daughter, and knew how to take a holiday off and spend it. They SPENT Christmas Day, like a bonus check or a tax return, while at the sterile Hunnicutt Clinic shoes were always worn; sleeping was a private activity conducted only at night, in a bedroom; and everything was hoarded -- money and joy alike."
The dramas of this book, past and present, are woven together with the everyday business of living. If you invest the time to read "The Used World," you'll be rewarded with an unforgettable story, told with humbling beauty. Highly recommended.
Linda Bulger, 2008
A heartwarming story about women's friendships, small town life and history January 22, 2008
Haven Kimmel has created an everytown in Jonah, Indiana. You feel its deep, rich history as you see it through the eyes of its three main characters. Hazel, the owner of The Used World Emporium, a secondhand store and her two employees, Rebekah, the young and dumped daughter of a cult member, and Claudia, the big, strong 40-ish misfit may be nothing like you, but you will still wish they were your friends.
On the surface, these women live simple, even boring lives in a mundane small town. But, as you read, you'll uncover layers of intrigue and you'll want to discover what makes them tick and how they will react to the challenges they face.
This book is anything but preachy, but you will totally feel Kimmel's seminary attendance in the thorough and compelling religious influence. Claudia and Rebekah both wrestle with questions of faith and church. Claudia's pastor, Amos, is another character you'll wish you knew. I'd buy him a cup of coffee, myself.
If you are looking to read something that gives you a glimpse behind the curtain of our public personas, read this book.
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