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


From Publishers Weekly
Kimmel returns to the semirural Indiana of her bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, and her witty novel, The Solace of Leaving Early, to recount, in graceful episodes, the troubled coming-of-age of Cassie Claiborne, who balances "on the fulcrum of happiness and despair." Following a stage-setting prologue, the book opens with 10-year-old Cassie waiting, as usual, for her irresponsible, often absent father. Jimmy Claiborne is a selfish lout who cares more for pool than his family ("You know you're my favorite, Cassie, although God knows that ain't saying much"), but his love for the game soon becomes Cassie's when his friend Bud teaches her to play. As a teenager, she's a pool shark, paying the bills for her defeated, distant mother, Laura, and taking care of her overachieving, agoraphobic sister, Belle. Understandably, she'd like a better life. After Jimmy splits for good - divorcing his wife and emancipating his daughters - Laura waxes nostalgic about an old boyfriend in New Orleans whom she left for Cassie's father. Cassie fantasizes about how things might have been had her mother stayed with that man, "her shadow father." At 30, Cassie has become a strong-willed feminist (though she'd never call herself that) who goes to New Orleans to defeat her demons and her mother's old boyfriend in a game of nine-ball. Kimmel's characters are sympathetic and believable, and the author proves herself equally deft at conveying smalltown desolation and the physics of pool. With a tougher core than her previous books, and an ending that's redemptive without being cliched, Kimmel's latest is another winner. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Bookmarks Magazine
Kimmel developed a diverse fan club after the success of her smart, funny, and best-selling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, and her poignant novel, The Solace of Leaving Early. In Something Rising, Kimmel both varies and adheres to these forms, chronicling the everyday events and dramas of a determined young woman living in a small town and aching for another life. Critics praise Kimmel's complex, unsentimental style and convincing plot. The rather slow pace in the middle detracts slightly from this intelligent narrative about family responsibility and the quest for purpose in life. But Cassie is worth spending time with. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.


From AudioFile
In this follow-up to her wonderful novel THE SOLACE OF LEAVING EARLY, Haven Kimmel has created a tough, soft-hearted little girl who grows up immensely burdened by the care of the family her father has abandoned. Cassie Claiborne supports them by hustling pool--her father's game--and the story builds inevitably to the evening her father shows up at the pool hall and challenges her. Kimmel's characters are always vivid and fully imagined. Chelsey Rives inhabits with grace and sympathy Cassie's passive Louisiana-bred mother, whose life has taken such a wrong turn; her brilliant, helpless, deeply odd sister, Belle; and a full cast of young and old eccentrics who people Cassie's world. B.G. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Like her first novel, The Solace of Leaving Early (2002), Kimmel's second is set in a fictional small town in Indiana. Cassie Claiborne, the most grounded person in her family, longs for her feckless father to return home but in the meantime, she grows into a young woman and shoulders the burden herself. On one of his increasingly rare visits, her father takes her to a pool hall, and she watches him play. When she takes her turn with the cue, it becomes clear that Cassie has an innate talent for the game. She starts playing for money and routinely beats arrogant men who think they can easily best a young girl. Her skill ultimately leads her to a match with her father, but even pool playing can't make up for his abandonment of her, or the fact that Cassie's destiny might lie beyond Roseville. A connection to the characters in her first novel will make readers of Solace smile, and those new to Kimmel will find her thoughtful prose evocative and fresh. A beautiful coming-of-age story. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Something Rising (Light and Swift) is a stunner of a story that continues Kimmel's tradition of mixing page-turning narrative with heartbreaking honesty...Kimmel is a master of making [details] -- the stuff of everyday life -- endlessly readable." -- BookPage

"Kimmel, who clearly knows her way around a pool table, writes some mean sentences, as crisp as a perfectly executed bank shot." -- USA Today

"Kimmel reveals a Midwest that lies beyond the normal small-town,apple pie, heartland caricatures...Sam Shepard, eat your heart out!" -- Elle


Review
"Haven Kimmel hustles up a girl to steal your heart...If this book were a pool game, Kimmel would run the table all night long." -- Newsweek


Review
Elizabeth Berg What intelligence is here, and what grace, and what unsentimental (and contagious!) love for our messy ways here on planet Earth. Haven Kimmel is true gospel wearing blue jeans; you read her and you are lifted up.


Book Description
Cassie Claiborne's world is riddled with problems beyond her control: her hard-living, pool-shooting father has another wife; her mother can't seem to move herself mentally away from the kitchen window; and her sister Belle is a tempest of fragility and brilliance. Frustrated by her inability to care for so many, Cassie finds in the local pool hall an oasis of green felt where she can master objects and restrain her emotions. As Cassie grows up, she takes on the thankless role of family provider by working odd jobs and hustling pool. All the while she keeps her eye on the ultimate prize: wringing suitable justice from past wrongs and freeing herself from her life's inertia. In this uplifting story, Haven Kimmel reaches deep into the hamstrung souls of her fictional corner of Indiana to create an astonishing work of pure heartbreak.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Cassie Claiborne's world is riddled with problems beyond her control: her hard-living, pool-shooting father has another wife; her stoic, long-suffering mother is incapable of moving herself mentally away from the kitchen window; her sister Belle is a tempest of fragility and brilliance; her closest friends, Puck and Emmy, are adolescent harbingers of their own doomed futures. Frustrated by her inability to care deeply enough for so many troubled souls, Cassie finds in the local pool hall an oasis of green felt where she can master objects and restrain her emotions." As Cassie grows from a quietly complex girl into a headstrong young woman, she takes on the thankless role of family provider by working odd jobs and hustling pool. All the while, she keeps her eye on the ultimate prize: wringing suitable justice out of past wrongs and freeing herself from the inertia that is her life.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Kimmel returns to the semirural Indiana of her bestselling memoir, A Girl Named Zippy, and her witty novel, The Solace of Leaving Early, to recount, in graceful episodes, the troubled coming-of-age of Cassie Claiborne, who balances "on the fulcrum of happiness and despair." Following a stage-setting prologue, the book opens with 10-year-old Cassie waiting, as usual, for her irresponsible, often absent father. Jimmy Claiborne is a selfish lout who cares more for pool than his family ("You know you're my favorite, Cassie, although God knows that ain't saying much"), but his love for the game soon becomes Cassie's when his friend Bud teaches her to play. As a teenager, she's a pool shark, paying the bills for her defeated, distant mother, Laura, and taking care of her overachieving, agoraphobic sister, Belle. Understandably, she'd like a better life. After Jimmy splits for good-divorcing his wife and emancipating his daughters-Laura waxes nostalgic about an old boyfriend in New Orleans whom she left for Cassie's father. Cassie fantasizes about how things might have been had her mother stayed with that man, "her shadow father." At 30, Cassie has become a strong-willed feminist (though she'd never call herself that) who goes to New Orleans to defeat her demons and her mother's old boyfriend in a game of nine-ball. Kimmel's characters are sympathetic and believable, and the author proves herself equally deft at conveying smalltown desolation and the physics of pool. With a tougher core than her previous books, and an ending that's redemptive without being clich d, Kimmel's latest is another winner. Agent, Bill Clegg. (Jan. 6) Forecast: Aggressive promotion-including a 15-city author tour-should help Kimmel build her fiction readership, which has yet to match the response to her memoir. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

After a memoir (A Girl Named Zippy) and a debut novel (The Solace of Leaving Early), both well-received works with a lyrical bent, Kimmel attempts something different: the rough-and-tough story of a teenaged girl who helps support her family by working construction and shooting pool for money. Cassie does her best after her shark/hustler father abandons the family in small-town Indiana. The going-nowhere losers, the phobic and reclusive older sister, the seemingly passive mother, and the tender grandfather are all carefully drawn. Better yet is Uncle Bud, proprietor of the local pool hall, who teaches Cassie what she needs to know, supports her emotionally and sometimes financially, and shepherds her into adulthood. Cassie has two men to conquer: her father and the rich New Orleans doctor her mother might have married. More development of Cassie's character would have helped, and the ending is perhaps too suddenly sweet, but we should buy this one to encourage this talented author.-Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

AudioFile

In this follow-up to her wonderful novel THE SOLACE OF LEAVING EARLY, Haven Kimmel has created a tough, soft-hearted little girl who grows up immensely burdened by the care of the family her father has abandoned. Cassie Claiborne supports them by hustling pool—her father's game—and the story builds inevitably to the evening her father shows up at the pool hall and challenges her. Kimmel's characters are always vivid and fully imagined. Chelsey Rives inhabits with grace and sympathy Cassie's passive Louisiana-bred mother, whose life has taken such a wrong turn; her brilliant, helpless, deeply odd sister, Belle; and a full cast of young and old eccentrics who people Cassie's world. B.G. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews