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Title details for The Used World by Haven Kimmel - Available

The Used World

A Novel

by Haven Kimmel
C. J. Critt
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available

The Used World Emporium is the sprawling antique store where Hazel, Claudia, and Rebekah pass their days surrounded by dusty furniture, cast-off clothes, and ancient housewares. But with the unexpected arrival of two babies—and the unfolding of not one but three love stories, each spanning generations—their formerly used world becomes new again. Heartrending, hilarious, and inspiring by turn, The Used World is the book that Kimmel's loyal fans have been waiting for—and it is certain to win her legions of new ones.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 1, 2007

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780792752226
      • File size: 400893 KB
      • Duration: 13:55:11

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Kimmel uses Hazel Hunnicut's "Used World Emporium," a vast empire of secondhand books, furniture, and bric-a-brac, as the setting and central symbol for her most recent novel. She weaves it through the lives of her three main characters. While six-foot-five-inch Claudia and delicate, red-haired Rebekah both work there, Hazel is the owner and a kind of impresario, directing the sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous show. All three, though, carry heartbreaking pasts, used worlds of their own that Hazel helps transform into a richer present. Narrator C.J. Critt's reading is at once energetic and personal. She effortlessly draws a wide range of characters out of her deep, even gravelly, voice. The effect is soft and delicately intimate, perfect for the harsh discoveries the reader is to make. P.E.F. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 11, 2007
      Kimmel (Something Rising (Light and Swift)
      ; A Girl Named Zippy
      ) returns to rural Indiana in her expansive third novel. Hazel Hunnicut is the proprietor of Hazel Hunnicut's Used World Emporium, “the station at the end of the line” for myriad antiques and junk in Jonah, Ind. With her passel of cats and distaste for convention, Hazel is eccentric but grudgingly beloved by her two employees: Claudia, a tall and lonely woman ostracized for her androgynous appearance, and Rebekah, who is still recovering from an oppressive Pentecostal upbringing. With a nudge from Hazel and the appearance of an abandoned infant (whose junkie mother, a friend of Hazel's junkie sister, is dead), the two women form a relationship, providing momentum as an unlikely family takes shape and hidden connections between the characters are revealed. The story has many satisfying layers, but melding them requires Kimmel to jump around in time, sometimes to confusing results (among the pasts visited are Rebekah's childhood; Hazel's upbringing and the backstory on her relationship with the locals; and dreamlike visions of a long-ago romance between a black groundskeeper and a white judge's daughter). It's an intriguing puzzle box of a novel with a few edges left unsanded.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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