Michael Kimball
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Michael Kimball (born February 1, 1967 in Lansing, MI) is an American novelist. Sam Lipsyte (author of Home Land, The Subject Steve, and Venus Drive) calls Kimball "a hero of contemporary fiction."
[edit] Career
Kimball is the author of two novels. The Way the Family Got Away was met with great acclaim in the US [1] and abroad [2]. Angus Wolfe Murray of The Scotsman writes: "Occasionally a novel by a new writer will cause critics to choke with excitement. This is one." The Times calls Kimball's novel "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.” And The Book Seller calls The Way “A bleak, powerful and extraordinary debut.”
The Way has been translated into Italian (E allora siamo andati via [3], Dutch (Onze auto naar de Hemel) [4]), German (Eine Familie verschwindet [5]), Portuguese, Spanish (Y la familia se fue [6]), and Hebrew.
Kimball followed up with the beautiful and heartbreaking How Much of Us There Was (Fourth Estate, 2005; Harper Perennial, 2006 [7]). Metro London's Claire Allfree writes that "Kimball has created something rare and brave in his second novel." Mariko Kato in Time Out London observes: "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."
He is also a founding editor of Taint Magazine [8], and the recipient of a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
[edit] Interviews
Read Kimball discuss The Way the Family Got Away [9]
Read Kimball discuss How Much of Us There Was [10]
[edit] External links
Kimball's Biography and Agent [11]
