Little Miseries: This Is Not a Story About My Childhood. A Novel.

by Kimberly Olson Fakih

Overview

Set in Iowa and Minnesota in the 60s and 70s, Little Miseries is a Midwestern Gothic where sometimes the misery is just that—little—and sometimes it is epic and yawning, capable of swallowing every childhood memory. There are the miseries the Castles will talk about—old family lore about a great, great, great uncle who was split in two while connecting railroad cars—and the misery none of them will face. There are days at the lake, placid except for inexplicable tension the parents won't address and the three Castle children don't have names for. There are stories about sex and gore at cocktail parties, around bonfires, at sleepovers, in classrooms, and in the newspaper. Everyday growing pains are shadowed by the abduction of a local girl, reports of a massacre of nurses, and the harm done by strangers and by those who are charged to care for children. To survive childhood is to survive all of these miseries and tragedies, because growing up means waking up to a world that can be random and brutal.

With some thematic overlap with Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm or if Sally Draper from Mad Men got to tell her side of the story, Little Miseries is set in a time and place when parents didn’t talk much to their children but they certainly talked around them—while dipping into whiskey or rum punch, whether on a long drive, on the beach, or in the comfort of their own home. Little Miseries is a tribute to what it means to come into awareness, to be a part of a family unit, and to bear responsibility for those you loved and who have been harmed along the way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781953002327
Publisher:	Delphinium
Publication date:	09/19/2023
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Before Little Miseries, Kimberly Olson Fakih wrote two works of fiction for children, High on the Hog (1992) and Grandpa Putter & Granny Hoe (1991), as well as the lexicon, Off the Clock (1994) and The Literature of Delight, a guide to funny books for kids. She worked in publishing for many years, as a freelance reviewer at the New York Times and elsewhere, Kirkus Reviews, and currently a senior book review editor at School Library Journal. She is an Iowa-born, Minnesota-raised, and permanent New Yorker.

Editorial Reviews

"Little Miseries, indeed. But first there’s joy, wonder and resiliency. Fakih lovingly captures the rapture and mysteries of childhood en reroute to a loss of innocence that is heartbreaking yet triumphant."

Michael H. Weber

"Kimberly Olson Fakih’s Little Miseries is a lively and energetic account of growing up in the Midwest in the last century, in a variegated family assailed by disasters great and small."

Lynne Sharon Schwartz

11/14/2022

Children’s book author Fakih (High on the Hog) makes her adult debut with this sharp depiction of a Midwestern girl’s coming-of-age. Kimmy grows up in late 1960s Iowa surrounded by markers of her family’s former fortune as seed magnates. In a series of vignettes, Kimmy, her parents, and two siblings suffer a litany of bad experiences ranging from the quotidian (her mom forces her into dark clothes to “slenderize” her larger figure) to traumatic (a seemingly friendly man nearly kills all the children during an erratic boat trip). As well, Kimmy suspects her grandfather is sexually abusing her younger sister, but her chain-smoking, short-fused mother dismisses the concern. Fakih’s vivid depictions of Kimmy’s adolescent dilemmas blend nostalgia for the period with a visceral sense of her protagonist’s pain, as Kimmy fixates, without really understanding the details, on the real-life murder of Pamela Powers; longs for her mother to appreciate her; and crushes on a dad whose family she babysits for. Despite the lack of a central arc, each episode ably captures Kimmy’s grappling with her place in the world amid adult secrets. Though readers will find the structure lacking, the depiction of a teen navigating a confusing phase of life rings true. Agent: Mary Krienke, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"The book... shows how catastrophic the secret world of grown-ups can truly be on the delicate web that is a family... it shows Fakih as a gifted chronicler of children's helplessness and familial angst." — Kirkus Reviews

"[In] this sharp depiction of a Midwestern girl's coming-of-age... Fakih's vivid depictions of Kimmy's adolescent dilemmas blend nostalgia for the period with a visceral sense of her protagonist's pain." — Publishers Weekly

"This is one of my favorite books of the year. Kimberly Olson Fakih perfectly captures the ways in which children see everything adults wish they would miss, and the intense effects those things, both the good and the bad, have on them as they grow. From the beginning to end, Kimmy is a character that drives home that the adults around her continuously let her and her siblings down, and sometimes with a row of sorrows and a journal of broken things, it is up to the child to stop generational curses and step up to bring the little miseries to the light."  — Lydia McCollum, Still North Books, Hanover, NH

"Kimberly Olshan Fakih's Little Miseries is a lively and energetic account of growing up in the Midwest in the last century, in a variegated family assailed by disasters great and small." — Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of Truthtelling

"Little Miseries, indeed. But first there's joy, wonder and resiliency. Fakih lovingly captures the rapture and mysteries of childhood en route to a loss of innocence that is heartbreaking yet triumphant." — Michael H. Weber, Oscar-nominated screenwriter and co-writer of (500) Days of Summer

Praise for Kimberly Olson Fakih: "Fakih offers a refreshing and often humorous child's-eye view of the world…”  — School Library Journal

Praise for High on the Hog: “…Fakih's characters are leading fully examined (and discussed) lives; but though her narrative is leisurely, it holds interest with its unexpected flashes of humor and its engaging evocation of the Heartland and some of its sons and daughters, as well as the tantalizing mystery. A beautifully constructed book, rich in offbeat descriptions and exchanges that leave room for just the kind of serendipitous insights that ‘GS’—who does turn up—extols.” — Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Grandpa Putter & Granny Hoe: “…It's all amusingly recorded in Fakih's briskly lilting narrative and neatly cadenced dialogue. … meanwhile, the grands' bickering makes a comical stand-in for the more bitter conflicts children endure between parents or siblings.” — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

01/01/2023

DEBUT School Library Journal Senior Editor Fakih's coming-of-age debut novel reads like a memoir. Narrated by Kimmie, stuck between sporty older brother Paul and cute baby Nellie, and told in vignettes, it conveys Kimmie's growing awareness that adults aren't infallible and that sex is a thing. Readers witness the bully gym teacher who gets his comeuppance, the snobby grandmother constantly criticizing Kimmie's weight, and the other relatives, friends, and acquaintances who don't always act right. Kimmie is the chronicler of the family's goings-on, constantly aware of the tension that lurks below the surface of their booze and cigarette-filled Mad Men lifestyle: neighbors behaving badly at a birthday party; her father's semi-creepy treatment of a family friend; her mother's unhappiness. She is living through that teenage phase of discovering who she is and separating herself as a person from her family. By the time she comes to grips with who she is and can clearly see the big misery that is happening there, it's too late. VERDICT A heartbreaking and realistic view of childhood that would be a great addition to any library collection. Not just for fiction readers but also for fans of memoirs like Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle and Mary Karr's The Liar's Club.—Marianne Fitzgerald

Library Journal

2022-10-12
A young girl growing up in 1960s Iowa learns that grown-ups are rarely what they seem.

The Castle family name once meant greatness—or, rather, a particular sort of Midwest greatness, when their seeds were sold all over Iowa and their name adorned signs and silos everywhere they looked. But the Castle family of the 1960s, as seen through the eyes of the middle child, narrator Kimmy, no longer lives in the big house on the hill that they still drive by every Christmas Eve. Instead, Mr. Castle is a church deacon and a mortgage broker with a scotch- and cigarette-loving wife and three children: plump, bookish Kimmy, older brother Paul, and little Nellie. While the book is labeled a novel, it reads much more like a collection of linked stories or personal essays, its string of vignettes taking place mostly during Kimmy’s tween years. They recount Kimmy’s eyes first opening to the rules and constrictions that govern the lives of the adults around her, from the gym teacher who unleashes his cruelty upon two of Kimmy’s classmates to Kimmy’s cadre of grandparents and extended family in Des Moines. Though many of these figures appear in lower-stakes anecdotes (such as the disappointment Kimmy experiences when family friends skip out on a shared holiday tradition to stay at home with their new color TV), the book’s main throughline shows how catastrophic the secret world of grown-ups can truly be on the delicate web that is a family. Fakih’s book, her first for adults, will appeal to anyone who looks back on their own childhood with a mixture of nostalgia and horror.

Despite the book's unwieldy structure, it shows Fakih as a gifted chronicler of children's helplessness and familial angst.

Kirkus Reviews