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Something Rising (Light and Swift) : A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Haven Kimmel
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
Buy New: $7.32
You Save: $5.68 (44%)
New (3) Used (7) from $4.38
Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 1371795
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8
ASIN: B000F9SUZI
Publication Date: March 22, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Young Cassie Claiborne, the heroine of Haven Kimmel's egregiously ill-named novel Something Rising (Light and Swift), is a pool hustler. She learns to shoot pool for money when her unreliable father abandons her, along with her shut-in mother and her neurotic sister. Her growing-up is a dark thing: She has funny friends and pot-smoking good times out on country roads, but she's always carrying the financial and emotional burden left behind by her father. A good daughter, she lives with her mother in her small Indiana hometown till she's 30. Finally, after her mother's death, she decides to visit New Orleans to learn about her family's past. Up to this point, the novel is a sensitively written coming-of-age story, a little on the slow side. The book really takes off when Cassie hits the Big Easy. A taciturn, almost compulsively private person, she finds herself encountering enchanting strangers at every turn. A new friend named Miss Sophie grills Cassie about her line of work, and she replies, "I play pool for money. I just announce myself, I say I've come to a place to play their best, and for money, and that person is called. Or I wait for him." Miss Sophie replies "My interest in this is so sudden it feels lewd." The exchange gives an idea of the malleability and strength of Kimmel's style. You believe in both the gruff Cassie and the effusive Miss Sophie, and you believe they could charm each other. Such off-kilter connections are, in a sense, the point of the novel; it's a book about the serendipity of finding someone to like. --Claire Dederer
Product Description
From the bestselling author of The Solace of Leaving Early, a funny, heartwrenching and unforgettable novel following the fortunes of a particulary feisty young female pool hustlerCassie Claiborne, at ten, was surely too young to be the head of her disparate family. But who else was going to do it? Growing up in Indiana with her distant, heartbroken mother, Laura, her fragile, eccentric sister Belle, and her beloved grandfather Poppy, Cassie got sick of waiting for her father to come home from his everlasting gambling, drinking binges and took matters into her own hands. Taught by her father to play pool, Cassie was a natural and was soon hustling experienced pool players -- and winning. We follow Cassie from a complex little girl to a rebellious and impetuous young woman as she tries to create a world for her mother and sister. Overwhelmed but compelled by her family's love, Cassie feels herself drawn back to the past by the stories of her mother's youth, and she leaves her town for New Orleans, hoping that there she can find a truth to soothe her wounded soul and to allow herself the happiness she has been denied.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Eh. November 3, 2008
Ok, well, I liked this book. It's just that I really wanted to LOVE this book, because the writing is beautiful and the author comes with such rich acclaim. But I felt I was kept at arm's length from the heart of this book, like I should have been content being just a spectator when I really wanted to be a participant.
The main character of this novel is Cassie Clairborne, who I suppose (to the casual observer) could be called a pool hustler. I love how she explains herself, though: "`I play American pool, not English billiards, and I'm not a shark. That would be a person who pretended not to be a good player, then stole the money of her opponent. I just announce myself, I say I've come to a place to play their best, and for money, and that person is called. Or I wait for him.'[...] `And do they, would they beat you?' `No,' Cassie said. `No, they wouldn't.'" The novel follows her "coming of age" in rural Indiana.
I love Cassie Clairborne, that much I can say without hesitation. She is complicated, so tough, so tender. Your heart breaks for her. I thought there would be many more poolhall scenes, but the fact that she plays pool is really just a consequence of her life experience, not the center of it. Pool is how she processes all of the pain and hurt and confusion she feels from the rest of her world.
I also love Kimmel's writing style, which is at times very lyrical. The pace of the plot, though, was what killed it for me. I joked with my husband that this book - even at a mere 269 pages - is a "skimmer's paradise," meaning that you could skim several large passage (even pages!) and jump back in with the plot having only moved forward just a skoche. I think I missed a lot of Kimmel's literary flourishes, but I could not convince myself to digest every single word.
Still, there is a different air to this book, and it is redeemed in the end by a handful of giant leaps in the storyline. I ended satisfied, if not completely enthusiastic.
 Who says small town life isn't epic? Certainly not Haven Kimmel. October 9, 2008
This is the second Haven Kimmel novel I've read, and I have to say I'm hooked. It's her characters. You'd be lucky to be a Haven Kimmel character. You might work in a tiny library and spend your life grieving the man who left you for a woman with a prior claim. You might never leave your kitchen table out of a fear of germs. You might be graceful, rock-hard pool hustler with a failing Mazda truck and a disputed cue. Whatever you are, you will be as deeply engaged in the world of ideas as any professor. I love this. These people think and they read and make up sort of a lost tribe of superior intellects living in Midwestern diaspora. Kimmel does have a tendency to invest her characters with a slightly incredible degree of lean, wolfen physical grace and beauty, but you know, I can forgive that because these people are so fun to read.
Something Rising September 5, 2008
I must say I was a bit disappointed with this book after reading all of this author's prior publications. The transitioning is hard to follow and while the real situation is understood at the end, I found myself unsatisfied since the various pieces and scenarios preceding the finale did not all hold together for me.
Not my Favorite August 20, 2008
This is not my favorite Haven Kimmel novel, but it's worth reading, and like most, perhaps all, of Kimmel's work, redemptive.
an interesting book October 17, 2007
This is a really interesting book. The main character, Casey is evolving in the story. Keeps your attention.
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