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Us
"The best little novel you haven't heard about, Us ... Kimball's clear-eyed prose unlocks the most vulnerable voice ... creating an emotional link that leaves no reader untouched."

-- Oprah’s 2011 Summer Reading List

5 Stars: "The sentences and even paragraphs simulate the stunned but dutiful response to the suffering of a loved one: short, raw and somewhat elliptical, wrapping themselves around the small tasks at hand and the larger questions constantly raised. ... Kimball’s short chapters cast such a hypnotic spell, the reader is able to plug directly into the character’s grief. It’s a simply gorgeous and astonishing book, the kind that makes the outside world disappear once you open its pages."

-- Time Out Chicago

“Michael Kimball’s Us is heartbreakingly lovely ... the writing’s a pleasure, and sometimes you just need to read something with weight.”

-- The Paris Review

“Be forewarned: when you pick up Us, Michael Kimball's haunting story of love and letting go, you will not be able to put it down.”

-- Psychology Today

"Your book, Michael Kimball, is the book I wish I could write. Your book is the book I wish every book could be. It is reification. It is haptic. It is ecstatic. Thank you, Michael Kimball, for Us."

-- Lily Hoang’s “A letter to Michael Kimball” @ HTMLGiant

"Kimball is an amazingly empathetic writer."

-- Time Out New York

[Us is] "incredibly raw and unabashedly real ... Kimball wins us over by his impressive emotional authenticity. Us is so authentic that one might mistake it for an autobiography."

-- Rain Taxi

"brilliantly written and heartbreaking in all the best ways"

-- Largehearted Boy

"this examination of love, grief and family makes these universal themes seem achingly fresh. ... Us delivers a powerful emotional experience."

-- Charlotte Viewpoint

"A Breathless Humanity": Us is "bold and generous. Its greatest strength is the sensitivity with which Kimball explores the complexities of understanding pain and watching someone you love die. Us is a book that evocatively renders the static of sadness into a breathless humanity."

--The Faster Times

A Top 10 Best Literary Love Story: "The story chronicles a relationship that is both bludgeoning in its sheer devastation and yet remarkably–exquisitely–beautiful ... a must read."

--The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog

"One of the saddest [books], and most compelling, ... is Michael Kimball’s gutting new novel, Us ... We consumed the entire book in one subway ride, and got more than a few strange glances our way as Kimball’s novel caused us to convulse with sobs."

-- Flavorpill

"As entertaining as it is intelligent as it is irreverent, Kimball’s prose is that rare creature that devours while being devoured."

-- Bomb

"One of my favorite books of the year"

--
http://carolineleavittville.blogspot.com/2011/06/michael-kimball-talks-about-us.html" rel="external">Caroline Leavitt

An interview with Michael about Us, Dear Everybody, sadness and reckoning, euphoria and writing, and writing as something that is rendered @ Used Furniture

A five-question, one-minute interview at Birdsong.

"I’ve read review after review of this amazing book that turns back on itself and becomes a sort of self-examination by the reviewer. I think that says more about the brilliance of Kimball’s novel than it does about us readers ... Michael Kimball’s wonderful book ... it fastened itself around my neck as I read, got in my eyes, swam in my bloodstream, infected my brain. The book made it happen. Us became a story about my grandfather, about my husband, about the people I love and the loss I fear."

-- Amber Sparks, Big Other

"... disarmingly simple, gorgeously structured, and as achingly sad a book as I have ever read. I had to stop a couple of times. I really did. The book’s elderly couple—so painfully aware of the fact that one of them is living the last parts of her life—are drawn so concisely, and the situation is so precisely rendered, it was hard not to spend all my time living in it even when I wasn’t reading the book."

-- Matthew Simmons, HTMLGIANT

Us is "tightly written, unflinchingly direct, and achingly beautiful." "The prose is as clean as a surgical incision and Kimball dives directly into the dark waters of love and mortality that most writers only dip their toes into. This is a book you should be reading."

--The Faster Times

"a literary gem"

-- LitCh@t

"Michael Kimball is a rare, rare writer, a writer whose empathy knows no limits. He holds the note of loss and his voice never cracks."

-- Outsider Writers Collective

"Kimball wonderfully balances gravity with brevity. That he can pack such an emotional experience into such a small space speaks to his talents, both as a mature authority on relationships and as a craftsman of tight, effective prose. ... Each moment the husband gets to share with his wife becomes a beautiful extension of their time together on earth. ... leaves the reader absolutely floored"

--Electric Literature

"Michael Kimball faces mortality directly, confronting the passionate life in the most poetic sentences I’ve read from a fiction writer in a long time. And by poetic, I don’t mean that the prose is prettified with a lot of adjectives and fancy syntactical flourishes. It is poetic in the sense that the sentences seem made, hewn, created by a mind and hand that love the way we think and talk in sentences. ... After having finished one of the saddest books I’ll probably ever read, I was filled with a strange exuberance. ... If death is a sentence, Michael Kimball has found its words."

-- The Big Other

"Michael Kimball's stylistic capacities dwarf those of most contemporary fiction writers."

-- Room 220

An interview with Michael about compression, beautiful documentaries, and the reputation of The Tyrant @ Creative Loafing

"I sat down with the book and didn’t get up until I finished without realizing that any time had passed. ... The man’s story is heart-wrenching and he holds onto you without letting go, not that you would ever want him to."

-- New Pages

Michael is "the writer you've been dreaming of"

--The Stranger

"Kimball's naked prose magnifies the poignancy of the situation ... Us is a reminder that we are all tragedies waiting to happen. It makes you aware of the fragility of your own heart, of the dull ache it often carries. Some readers may find Us depressing, but with its awareness comes a gem of appreciation for the life you currently lead, even with its eventual demise. This book shines a laser beam into the deep, dark places in the human soul, and renders them oddly transparent."

-- Urbanite

"There is this gentility and softness and purity that becomes some kind of being, and this being, by the end of the book, is us. ... There is a gap here in what is actually happening and what is going on in the narrator's head, and it is in this gap where the sadness and the love exist."

--The Laughing Yeti

"Us is such strange magic ... Us brings up something strange and terrifying to consider ... [about] the real beauty and magic of being alive ... It's a gorgeous book."

-- Corduroy Books

"5 Stars ... Michael Kimball has blown me away with his upcoming release Us -- a beautiful, heart-wrenching novel"

-- The Next Best Book Blog

“such a painful softness”: "Michael Kimball’s Us is, as much as we may not want to admit it, the story of all of us and what we daily attempt to ignore: that eventually our loved ones, our spouses and significant relations, will either die and leave us or we will die and leave them."

-- Red Fez

"Us might break your heart, but it's a good kind of break-- the kind that reminds you how nice it is to be alive."

-- The Nervous Breakdown

"a devastatingly beautiful portrait of a human being losing the person who matters to him most"

-- Barn Owl Review

"I even walked to and from school in order to keep reading the novel." "Us moves you, rattles you, and shakes your spirit as a human ... read this magnificent novel."

-- BookedinChico

"an unflinching account." "Kimball takes many risks in Us and ... the risks pay off, leading to a conclusion that is as surprising as it is inevitable, and deeply satisfying."

-- Chamber Four

NPR's Madeleine Brand interviews Michael about Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard) for All Things Considered.
Listen to the interview, read about the project, and watch the slideshow build-out.

Dear Everybody is a "curatorial masterpiece"

-- The Believer

"60 Writers/60 Places is a wonderful example of literary thinking becoming a visual language." Both "I Will Smash You" and "60 Writers" are "disarmingly engaging" and both films "subtly acc[rue] an emotive force."

-- Bret McCabe, City Paper

Michael featured in Poets & Writers: Suzanne Pettypiece's profile "Beyond Words" about writers who practice other arts. There's a two-page+ interview where Michael talks about painting.

Dear Everybody is named one of the "25 Important Books of the 00s" at HTMLGIANT

Dear Everybody is on Flavorwire's Ultimate Hipster Reading List

"Dear Everybody is one of the finest, most heartbreaking books I’ve ever read ... Kimball writes his characters with a tenderness that moves me profoundly ... The complexity in Dear Everybody builds subtly, but by the end of the book the immensity of the story that has been told is staggering."

--Roxane Gay, HTMLGIANT

"I know of no one ... who knows and understands every cog and flywheel and screw of the language machine to the degree of Kimball's reach."

-- Emerging Writers Network

Dear Everybody is "forever embedded in my brain"

-- John Madera, Word Riot

I WILL SMASH YOU: "Kimball and Dipierro have put together a collection of money shots that make you care about who's coming and why."

-- Bret McCabe, City Paper

"Dear Everybody ... touches the heart of hearts ... snowflake-like letters ... exquisite ... the innermost feelings of real feeling ... "

-- Bard on Chinese

Michael Kimball "is already delivering the future of the novel." He is "one of the authentic innovators in contemporary fiction," who should be compared to Raymond Carver and Italo Calvino, and his writing "sings the most intimate tragedies of the Great American Family."

-- Mauricio Montiel Figueiras, Letras Libres

"In addition to writing stunning prose, Kimball evocatively hints at entire physical and emotional worlds lying just behind his story’s surface. In many cases, the author’s verbal compression both amplifies and dampens the tragic clamor of Jonathon’s letters ... they harbor such a strange emotional power that you’ll find them hard to forget."

-- Michael Miller, Time Out New York

"There is a whole life contained in this slim novel, a life as funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking as any other, rendered with honest complexity and freshness by Kimball's sharp writing."

-- Matt Bell, Los Angeles Times

Best of Baltimore: Michael is City Paper's Best Literary Agent of Change

"I don’t always say this, so I hope you will indulge me: Read Dear Everybody. It is a work of literary inventiveness and great compassion."

-- Bethanne Patrick, WETA's The Book Studio

"elegantly and eloquently written ... It's an unforgettable book ... I highly recommend it"

-- Anne Stinson, The Star-Democrat

"Kimball does a superb job. ... The picture that is drawn, though, is unutterably sad. It’s a difficult read in places, but moving, more real and heartfelt than many stories where authors cover up their discomfort by giving their characters extravagant eccentricities."

-- Bruce Dennill, The Citizen

"Human Destiny Starkly Illuminated"

-- Rupert Wondolowski, City Paper

"A wonderful, clever, imaginative and moving book. It really is quite something ... a fucking marvelous book."

-- Scott Pack, Me and My Big Mouth

Susan Tomaselli conducts an extended, collage-like interview with Michael in Dogmatika

"stunning...Kimball has crafted an unconventional masterpiece"

-- Citizen Dick

349 Pieces: On Writing Dear Everybody in The View From Here

An interview at Apostrophe Cast in which Michael answers whether he ever had a crush on a literary celebrity

"In this intimate epistolary novel, a mentally ill weather man radiates crystalline awareness and luminous delusion while his family and others who knew him try to make sense of his tragic life. Both gloomy and amusing, Kimball's flurry of short short stories remind us of the necessity of communicating and the daunting difficulty of truly connecting."

-- Apostrophe Cast

"very affecting, warm" and "wry and funny and sweet"

-- Simon Appleby, Bookgeeks

5 stars (out of 5): "beautifully heartbreaking" and "a genuine discovery"

--Kathleen Wächter, The Junction

"fantastic"

--Dan Wickett, EWN

"one of the hottest, most innovative books of the year"

--HTMLGIANT

"the novel is spot on. It amazes me that a writer can build suspense in a story where we already know the ending. It’s kind of awesome. In fact, I enjoyed this book so much I did something I never do. I wrote the author a fan letter."

-- Jodi Chromey, Minnesota Reads

"Dear Everybody is about a weatherman who commits suicide, and it is heart-achingly good."

--Matthew Simmons, Hobart

Michael named "International King of Postcards" at HTMLGIANT

An interview at Hobart

Michael's Word reading a Time Out New York "Critic's Pick": "Kimball’s book, Dear Everybody, is a truly moving and often hilarious epistolary novel"

Michael's radio interview on City Pulse on the Air

Kimball's "latest book could be a breakout for him. ...his work is about death, and it has been stripped down in the stark way it deserves."

-- Bill Castanier, City Pulse

Michael reads from Dear Everybody on WYPR's The Signal

Michael is an Indie Heartthrob at Bookslut

An interview in Word Riot

An interview in the Sunday print & online editions of The Baltimore Sun

"Dear Everybody is a book both intricate and new, painful and engaging, tapping on the clearest rendering of what is human, on the importance of the rhythm of each word. Dear Everybody is so many things--a collage, a hypnosis, an invention, a thing of awe, perhaps a warning--a work of new that will no doubt linger in your mind and in your stomach and in your aging skin for quite some time."

-- Blake Butler

Playlist for Dear Everybody at Largehearted Boy's Book Notes

"Dear Everybody is a cleverly constructed book that balances pathos and humor exquisitely, and proves Michael Kimball to be a master storyteller."

-- David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy

“quite a literary feat … the character of Jonathon Bender is stripped down to his emotional core.”

-- Gregg Wilhelm, WYPR

"Kimball writes with such deep emotion and crafts his sentences with such mastery that he sweeps away his own footprints and allows the reader unhindered access to the story. The fragmented nature of the book makes it an addictive read, giving the reader regular breaks while at the same time drawing them along. I often found myself thinking, 'Just one more letter. One more diary entry. One more interview,' until it was time to go back to the beginning and start over. With Dear Everybody, Michael Kimball achieves the perfect balance of form and content, comedy and tragedy – all without sliding into melodrama or sentimentality, instead evoking genuine emotion that will remain with readers far beyond the last page."

-- Josh Maday, New Pages

"Quirky, and idiosyncratic, this is a very amusing novel that is oddly endearing, and conceals a warm heart beneath its wit."

-- BooksQuarterly

Dear Everybody is "inventive and often extremely funny, but it will also break your heart. Michael Kimball is one of the most talented and original writers in America today. You should read his books."

-- The Greenpoint Gazette

Advance Praise for Dear Everybody

“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

“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

“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

“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

Review Excerpts for the UK edition of Us

"It’s easy to see why Kimball is held up as one of the potentially great literary hopes of recent times."

--Book Munch

"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

"A deep love between an ageing husband and wife is given a heartbreaking voice in Michael Kimball’s second novel, [Us]. … 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

"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."

--The Observer

"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 minute-to-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. Fewer than 200 pages but it says all."

--Telegraph and Argus

Review Excerpts for The Way the Family Got Away

"Kimball's first novel ... is moving and clever: the open road, so long a symbol of freedom and self-discovery in American fiction, is here rendered as denuded of promise, embodying desertion, desolation and rootlessness. ... Kimball's novel reads as parable about the death of the family, of how impossible family life is in a numbedly materialistic society. However, the largeness of the message should not detract from the intricacy of fine, precise storytelling ... he has taken it [American literature] somewhere very dark and unsettling."

--The Times

"Occasionally a novel by a new writer will cause critics to choke with excitement. This is one. ... Kimball resembles a skinhead at a cocktail party—no quarter given to poxy commercialism. For that reason alone, his achievement is admirable. He ignores the media's liason with trends, fame, success, and trivia."

--The Scotsman

"An extraordinary novel"

--The Times Metro

"A bleak, powerful and extraordinary debut"

--The Book Seller

"Kimball has created a short novel with long echoes, an epitaph of economics."

--The Stranger

"The feelings inspired by Kimball's first novel are hard to shake, like a continuous, terrifying, fever-induced nightmare."

--City Link

"Michael Kimball breathes life into American experimental fiction in this moving debut novel."

--Karen LIllis

"You'll come away thinking you’ve shared time with someone who’ll be on shelves for many years to come."

--RTÉ (Irish Public Broadcasting)