The Way the Family Got Away (Four Wall Eight Windows; 4th Estate, 2000) is the remarkable story of the journey seen through the eyes of the family's surviving children, a young boy and his younger sister, and of the ways loss makes itself felt through a child's imagination. On the journey, they try to make sense of their brother's death, why they must leave home, and how they get from one place to the next. Through their stories, they relate the miles they gain and the things they lose along the way. The Way the Family Got Away is a moving, unforgettable story.
"This searing odyssey is
relayed to us by the younger members of the family, who tell
their story in uncritical tones, their insistent voices
hitting the reader like soft hammers striking a sore place.
Kimball has much to say about life, suffering, and family
togetherness."
--The Good Book Guide
"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, Tim Teeman, "Highway to the Heart of
America"
"Kimball does have an arresting talent"
--Sunday Tribune, James McHale
"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, Angus Wolfe Murray
"Written in the grand tradition of American authors"
--The List (Glasgow and Edinburgh)
"Michael Kimball's debut contains audacious moments ...
adding new dimensions to powerful events"
--The Times Metro, Tarek Modi
"An extraordinary novel"
--The Times Metro, Tarek Modi
"A touching tale which has moments of rare perception
and heart felt sympathy"
--South Wales Evening Post, Andrew Rogers
"A bleak, powerful and extraordinary debut"
--The Book Seller
"All of the loss of life is packed into the cadence of a
child's voice in Michael Kimball’s The Way the Family Got
Away. ... the real and transient drives The Way
along with its cadence, a beaded necklace that breaks and
scatters across America. In the end, things are spread to the
very corners of earth, where angels hold up the edges.
Kimball has created a short novel with long echoes, an
epitaph of economics."
--The Stranger, Traci Vogel
"Set mostly in the back seat of a car ... you can feel the
intense heat of the summer sun that sears itself into your
memory like a baby raging with fever. The words and the
subject matter are stifling, as they force us to look at
things we'd rather not see, and occasionally make us want to
flee from that back seat and run away as fast as our legs
with carry us. ... The feelings inspired by Kimball's first
novel are hard to shake, like a continuous, terrifying,
fever-induced nightmare."
--City Link, Colleen Dougher
"Kimball is about a new hope that exists in defiance of the
lie that crawls through the linear character of the written
words, the left, right, down, down toward the back cover. …
You can't read if you can't read this book."
--Elimae, Ken Sparling, author of Dad Says He
Saw You at the Mall
The Way the Family Got Away "goes beyond story,
pushing the realm of language and voice … to transcend the
ordinariness of storytelling."
--Dallas Morning News, Donley Watt
"Kimball evinces an undeniable feel
for the cadences of children’s speech."
--Publisher’s Weekly
"The children describe in horrifyingly innocent but graphic
detail the baby's embalming and eventual cremation, Momma's
miscarriage, and the disintegration of their family. ... By
the time [the family reaches] Bompa's house, everyone
involved, including the reader, is emotionally drained.
Kimball pulls off a remarkable feat: by filtering everything
through the children's eyes, the reader is kept off balance,
never sure what is real and what is a child's interpretation
of unfamiliar and frightening events. A difficult, but
compelling novel."
--Booklist, George Needham
"Relentless in its misery ... illustrating the children's
attempts
to cope with and make some meaning
of their massive loss and complete powerlessness"
--Library Journal, Rebecca Stuhr
"Kimball should be commended"
--Village Voice, Emily Barton
"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), Harry Guerin