Tiny Americans: A Novel
Written by Devin Murphy
Narrated by Ann Marie Lee, Kirby Heyborne, Andrew Eiden and Christian Baskous
4/5
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About this audiobook
From the National Bestselling author of The Boat Runner comes a poignant, luminous novel that follows one family over decades and across the world—perfect for fans of the film Boyhood.
Western New York, 1978: Jamie, Lewis, and Connor Thurber watch their parents’ destructive dance of loving, hating, and drinking. Terrance Thurber spends this year teaching his children about the natural world: they listen to the heartbeat of trees, track animal footprints, sleep under the star-filled sky. Despite these lessons, he doesn’t show them how to survive without him. And when these seasons of trying and failing to quit booze and be a better man are over, Terrance is gone.
Alone with their artist mother, Catrin, the Thurber children are left to grapple with the anger they feel for the one parent who deserted them and a growing resentment for the one who didn’t. As Catrin withdraws into her own world, Jamie throws herself into painting while her brothers smash out their rage in brutal, no-holds-barred football games with neighborhood kids. Once they can leave—Jamie for college, Lewis for the navy, and Connor for work—they don’t look back.
But Terrance does. Crossing the country, sobering up, and starting over has left him with razor-sharp regret. Terrance doesn’t know that Jamie, now an academic, inhabits an ever-shrinking circle of loneliness; that Lewis, a merchant marine, fears life on dry land; that Connor struggles to connect with the son he sees teetering on an all-too-familiar edge. He only knows that he has one last try to build a bridge, through the years, to his family.
Composed of a series of touchstone moments, Tiny Americans is a thrilling and bittersweet rendering of a family that, much like the tides, continues to come together and drift apart.
Devin Murphy
Devin Murphy is the nationally bestselling author of The Boat Runner. His fiction has appeared in more than sixty literary journals and anthologies, including The Missouri Review, Glimmer Train, and Confrontation. He is an Associate Professor at Bradley University and lives in Chicago with his wife and kids. www.devinmurphyauthor.com
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Reviews for Tiny Americans
21 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5“The whole country seemed to offer up people made to feel small by one thing or another. Sun. Space. Each other. Tiny Americans everywhere. Drifting and drifting.” — Devin Murphy, “Tiny Americans”In Devin Murphy's novel “Tiny Americans” (2019), the three Thurber siblings are made to feel small by their quarreling parents, a drunken father and a mother more committed to her art than to her family. The parents have their own reasons for feeling small.Beginning in 1978, when the kids are young, and following one character or another over the next 40 years. Murphy shows us the consequences of parental neglect.Terrance Thurber, the father, soon abandons his family and heads out to a remote part of the West.The son Lewis, one of the most intriguing characters, becomes a sailor, first in the Navy and later the merchant marine. He feels fully a man only when at sea. Connor, the other son, reflects in 2005, "I'd become the kind of father I resented my own dad for being." Jamie, the daughter, seemingly prospers, but it takes years before she can say of her parents, "Everything I thought they burdened me with suddenly seems to switch from their lack to something different. Something I couldn't see until now. A wash of forgiveness comes."The siblings independently become ready for reconciliation by the time Terrance sends each of them a letter inviting them to a family reunion.The novel's chapters read like standalone stories, yet together they show a family that however broken remains bound by love. Murphy shows that love makes us bigger.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It seems to be a trend to use third person limited narration that rotates amongst two or more characters. It is less common, and perhaps a harder feat, to have those multiple points of view, all from first person narrative perspective. This means that each character's voice must be separate and distinct or the reader risks frustration and uncertainty about the "I" who is directing the story at that moment. In Tiny Americans, Devin Murphy's newest novel, he develops his characters beautifully, making the rotating first person narrative structure seem effortless in this poignant and well-written tale of a dysfunctional family and the roads they travel away from each other and then back again.Opening in 1978 with Terrance Thurber's attempts to teach his children, Jamie, Lewis, and Connor, about the natural world while trying to get himself sober, the Thurber family's world will soon be altered and re-ordered forever by Terrance's eventual abandonment of home and family. Told in chapters alternating mainly between the 3 siblings, the novel examines how this seminal event made each of them who they are as adults, probes where each was broken by their family's dysfunction, and traces those broken echoes through their lives. It is an introspective study of family, searching, and forgiveness. Sadness leaks through the chapters, which span 40 years. The narrative, primarily character driven, is chronological but spotted with intentional gaps. The chunks of missing time don't seem important though as the characters are fully rounded by the moments the narrative does spend with each of them, connecting them to each other even when they themselves are not in contact. From the siblings' early explorations into the natural world to the contrasting ways they each cocoon themselves after their father's leaving, Murphy has written this very carefully, very precisely, and very beautifully. The novel is intricately plotted in its move from one sibling to the next sibling either a year or several years further on. It is a slow and deliberate, intimate, ultimately touching story of a family that has lost its way trying to find equilibrium and connection again, to repair themselves, and to find forgiveness.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5'The whole country seemed to offer up people made to feel small by one thing or another. Sun. Space. Each other . Tiny Americans everywhere.' I wondered where this title came from and I had to wait to almost the end of the book to find out. A story of a modern family or maybe a family years and years ago with the same theme. Parents who love their kids but have a problem with alcohol so their kids are the ones who suffer. The father leaves when the children are young so that plays a big part. It is a book about redemption and forgiveness though, which makes it a good book. One that would make a controversial book club selection.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"Tiny Americans" is the story of the Thurber family (husband, wife, two boys, one girl) that is coming apart at the seams despite the best hopes of all involved. As the three children helplessly observe the daily doings of their parents, it is soon apparent that nothing can keep their parents together forever. It is only a matter of time before the family will officially and legally become a broken one, but life has to go on in the meantime.Sadly, this is a family that did not simply split into two parts. Rather, it shattered into five adults each in their own orbit, orbits that only very rarely ever intersected. Author Devin Murphy has used an interesting construction to tell his story: separate chapters of 15-20 pages each that skip ahead five or so years while alternating between the points-of-view of each of the Thurbers. The reader gets to watch each of the Thurber children evolve into adults with their own adult problems (especially when it comes to relationships with the opposite sex) while also learning just how off the rails their parents will ultimately go before finally making some effort at getting themselves together. Redemption comes, just as it so often does in the real world, where and when one least expects it - and that provides "Tiny Americans" with a memorable ending.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not a bad book to start off the New Year. Each chapter is a different character's perspective of their life and how it interconnects with each other's. Characters were likeable but unlikeable at the same time. Enjoyed how it ended and gave hope that more families could come to this type of conclusion. Definitely recommend
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book kept my attention throughout, which is more than I can say for a lot of books! What's interesting is that really the lives portrayed by the Thurbers aren't that unusual. Yes, the parents are wildly dysfunctional but so are the majority of parents. As I thought about the book after I finished, I thought what was the point? But realized that even though each of the characters had extreme difficulty in communicating they still marched forward through life. The end gave the reader hope that many of the open childhood wounds would be healed.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5eaways Devin Murphy is the author of The Boat Runner which I really like. I’m really not sure how I feel about this book. The Thurber family is close to being dysfunctional. The three young children love their parents but because of alcoholism and abandonment they eventually feel resentment and anger. Told over a period of 40 years in little snippets of their life they try to move on and not look back. Not easy to do. The author tells the story leaving blanks for the reader to fill in. The story focuses on reget and forgiveness and understanding the complexities of family. This book wasn’t for me but might be for you.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This wonderfully written book is about family - dysfunctional but still family. It's about love and forgiveness and finding yourself in the world. It is told in vignettes by each of the three children in the family over a 40 year time period. The author doesn't explain every little nuance over what is going on in their lives but gives hints and lets the reader use their imagination to fill in the blanks. The Thurber family is made up of Terrance and Caitrin and their three children, Jamie, Lewis and Connor. As the parents' drinking escalates, the children began to pull away from their parents to live their own lives even though they still deeply love their parents and hope for a better life. One day, their father just leaves to move out West. As their anger toward their father and their distrust toward their mother grows, all three children head off into different lives. Jamie goes to college and gets married, Lewis joins the Navy and Connor goes to work, gets married and has a son. Even though they try not to look back, their tumultuous childhood has greatly affected the way they live their adult lives. Will these three grown children be able to become a family again dispite the upheavals of their childhood years?This is a beautifully written book with fantastic characters. As the three children struggle to become adults, their struggles were very real and painful. I laughed with them and cried with them and felt their pain and insecurities. I loved the way the book was written and I know that this is a family in literature that I won't soon forget.Thanks to librarything for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.