Couldn't follow . Story jumped all around. Leslie didn't like it either!
Listened on audio C.J. Critt ( )

A beautiful book, full of weather and women. The three women who work together and whose stories inter-weave through the book are well constructed. The men are much more shadowy figures in the novel, with the exception of one vicar. Most of the novel is set in the cold of winter and you can feel the chill coming off the page, even when we move to the summer, it is not hot and sunny, but raining very, very heavily. She gets you into her characters heads and you feel everything with them; this is a warm and enchanting novel. ( )

Read this review and others at http://readingforsanity.blogspot.com/2009/01/used-world-by-haven-kimmel.html ( )

I also highly recommend Something Rising (Light and Swift) and The Solace of Leaving Early. Of the three, though, this one probably has the broadest appeal to readers not completely smitten with Kimmel's idiosyncratic style. ( )

If I summarize this book by saying that it’s about the interconnected lives of three women in a small town, I will be telling the exact truth, but I will also be giving you completely the wrong idea. Astrologically-minded Hazel Hunnicut owns The Used World Emporium, a giant indoor flea market in Jonah, Indiana. Her employee Claudia is middle-aged, freakishly tall (and often mistaken for a man), and terribly lonely. Rebekah is in her late twenties and has just found out she’s pregnant by the young man who just left her. All three women have to cope with demons from their past: Claudia can’t stop grieving for her dead mother, Rebekah’s father has disowned her for leaving the extremely strict religious sect in which she was raised, and Hazel has to deal with her aging hippie sister – among other things. But as the novel unfolds, all three women realize that what matters more than the past is the future they must all forge together.

This book was interesting…I’m still kind of digesting it. It has a contemplative feel, and although there’s a lot going on in terms of plot, it unfolds very slowly. I think my biggest problem with the book is that it’s so narrowly focused on this tiny cluster of women that it gets claustrophobic. There are practically no men – only two male characters of any significance, and only one of them is likeable (and he doesn’t appear that much in the book, actually). What I did like about The Used World was the writing style, which is lovely as always. There’s also a lot of religious speculation, which I find fascinating, but it’s more than that: religion really permeates the whole novel, and I think part of the reason is that Kimmel is trying to evoke the ethos of the American Midwest. In my opinion, she succeeds. I can’t say this is a novel I loved, but I definitely think it was worth reading.

Also, I actually underlined something in this book – possibly the first time I’ve ever made a mark in a novel. Here’s what struck me (it’s from the local minister’s sermon): “The Kingdom of God is a door perpetually opening, and it makes me, as dear Emerson said, ‘glad to the brink of fear.’”