-- Drew Nellins,
The
Believer
The Guardian profiles
Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on
a postcard)
"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
UK Blog Tour Wrap
Up
"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
Dear Everybody is "a
quiet tour de force ... Writing a novel with a moral centre
without being ‘preachy’ is not easy. Michael Kimball deserves
great praise."
-- Charlie
Wykes, The View From Here
"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
"Lightning has struck again with
this Baltimorean's book ... Kimball's protagonist possesses
an emotional clarity that makes his eventual suicide all the
more believable and tragic. ... You feel his pain."
-- John Lewis,
Baltimore Magazine
"In Kimball's careful hands the
epistolary form really gets to a special place. The
assemblage of textual evidence of Jonathan's dissolution
feels like a personal discovery. You don't feel as if there
is a story being told, it's as if you are uncovering the
story and telling it to yourself. I think that's where
Kimball really succeeds, he pieces this novel together in
just the right way so you don't really know that he pieced
together this novel in just the right way."
-- M. T. Fallon,
Trestle
Dear Everybody is a
"brilliantly designed novel ... It left me feeling as if the
author left a huge chunk of his heart on the page and it is
this generosity and depth that left me stunned."
-- Katrina Denza,
Illuminate; Ruminate;
Create
Dear Everybody is
"striking, witty, and above all moving. ... And here’s the
most impressive thing to me – what Michael Kimball has done
is to portray formally the fragmentation of a life (yet in a
holistic and wholly satisfying way) – something which the
form of a traditional novel would belie."
Michael Kimball "made me cry by
creating a character called Jonathon, and making me care
about him as if he were a member of my own family." Dear
Everybody is "sweet, sad and completely authentic."
--Fiona Robyn,
Planting Words
Dear Everybody "lives in
the head of the reader after we have read it ... The letters
combine to create a wonderful resonance that feels immensely
vivid and real ... a lot of writers will read Dear
Everybody wishing they had thought of something like
this themselves."
-- Adrian Graham,
Digital Fiction
Show
"unputdownable ... the most
searingly honest and authentic sentiments I have ever read
... I had to pick myself up off the floor at the end ...
easily the best read of 2009 thus far."
-- Lizzy Siddal,
Lizzy's Literary Life
"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
Top 5: Novels that You May Not Have Heard
Of in 3:AM
Magazine
Kay Sexton of Writing Neuroses asks
Michael some really smart questions about structure, the
great American novel (and its antithesis), and ghastly
characters
An interview in Lizzy's Literary Life
in which Michael and
Lizzy Siddal have cream tea
and discuss the unspoken
Ryan Manning asked Michael
some questions for his interview blog, Thunk, and he tried to
answer them. The questions are more difficult than they
first appear to be.
349 Pieces: On Writing
Dear Everybody
in The View From Here
"... the perfect way to tell the story of a man who has
fallen through the net ... remembering that he has taken his
own life gives a forensic importance to the documents. As you
go through the evidence you may find yourself caring more
with each page not only about his sad, short life but the
continuing narrative of those other voices around
him."
-- William Rycroft,
Just William's
Luck
Dear Everybody is "a
touching story of human relationships and how they can go
wrong, and a story which made me stop to ponder the
long-lasting effects our actions can have on others."
-- Tanabata,
In Spring It Is
Dawn
William Rycroft interviews
Michael in Just William's Luck about
how the book took shape, unreliable narrators, and writing
about mental illness. Plus, the interview includes a
six-word story and other
publishing exclusives.
An interview at Fictionaut in which
Michael talks about a few books that he wishes he had
written and what he would do if he weren't a writer
"Read this Book": "Dear Everybody is inventive,
ingenious and downright irresistible, a series of letters
left behind that present an astonishing life."
-- Caroline Leavitt,
Carolineleavittville
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."
A profile of Michael at
Examiner.com
An interview at Lucy
Magazine
"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"
"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
a "gripping book for fall" and
"oddly profound"
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 KGB reading a NY
Magazine "Editors' Recommendation"
"I’m giving this novel five out of five, it was so dark
(though not disturbing) yet touching, I loved reading this
novel and would recommend it to anyone."
"The Page 99 Test" for
Dear Everybody
"Each fragment drifts across the page like a cumulous cloud
and the cumulative effect of Kimball's book is melancholy and
elegiac and amusing."
-- Susan McCallum-Smith,
WYPR
"Kimball has written a book of
beauty. It's a sad book and a wonderful one, and one that
made me cry."
-- Joseph Young,
JMWW
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's Lit Crawl reading a
Time Out New York
"Critic's Pick"
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
Featured Author at Keyhole Magazine
-- an interview with Jonathan Bergey
& a conversation about "Feeling and Fiction"
with Karen Lillis
"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,
Keyhole
Magazine
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
"Dear Everybody is a
quick read, yet very interesting and true to life. This book
tells the tale of infidelity, mental illness, and the fact
that life is often hard to manage."
A profile of Michael in
The Examiner by Rafael
Alvarez
An
interview in The Urbanite Magazine
"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."
“One of the best reads
ever” -- R., Hey Josh
“A masterly written work of art” -- Ane Steenkamp,
Life After School
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
“Dear Michael Kimball: Thank you for this
book. What Jonathon Bender writes in his unsent letters are
what each of us longs to say, what all of us have been saying
our whole lives, just not out loud.”
--
Stephen Graham Jones, author of Demon Theory
“In
his third novel, Kimball gives us the singular life of
Jonathon Bender through a collage of different voices and
sources and in beautifully rendered sentences. He mercilessly
gives us a sense of the man and his trajectory, bringing us
painfully close to Bender himself. This is a compassionate
and compelling account of the quiet ways in which a life goes
wrong.”
--
Brian Evenson, author of The Open Curtain
Review Excerpts
for How Much of Us There
Was
"It’s easy to
see why Kimball is held up as one of the potentially great
literary hopes of recent times."
--Book Munch, Chris Pickering
"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, Claire Allfree
"A deep love between an ageing husband and wife is given a
heartbreaking voice in Michael Kimball’s second novel, How
Much of Us There Was. … 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, Mariko Kato
"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, Rebecca Seal
"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, Betty
Williams
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, Tim Teeman, "Highway to the Heart of
America"
"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
"An extraordinary novel"
--The Times Metro, Tarek Modi
"A bleak, powerful and extraordinary debut"
--The Book Seller
"Kimball has created a short novel with long echoes,
an epitaph of economics."
--The Stranger, Traci Vogel
"The feelings inspired by Kimball's first novel are hard to
shake, like a continuous, terrifying, fever-induced
nightmare."
--City Link, Colleen Dougher
"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