The Way the Family Got Away

The Way the Family Got Away
Michael Kimball

A remarkable first novel about a journey across America and the effects of grief and loss on a family that is trying to stay together when everything is falling apart.This is the way the family got away. They pack all the things they can fit into the car and place the body of their dead brother in the toy box and put him in the boot. They leave Mineola, Texas and head across the terrifying, vacant landscape of Mid-America. In every place they visit, they sell off what they can to make it to the next town. They keep going to keep the family together.Michael Kimball’s remarkable The Way The Family Got Away is the story of the journey seen through the eyes of the family’s surviving children, a young boy and his younger sister. They try to make sense of death; why they must leave home and how they get from one place to the next. It is an extraordinary study of the effects of grief upon language and the ways that loss makes itself felt through a child’s imagination.

The Way the Family Got Away

Michael Kimball

Copyright (#ulink_8b7f6514-d77f-5685-837e-c7765abac0f3)

First published in Great Britain in 2000 by

Fourth Estate

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

This edition first published in 2001

Copyright © Michael Kimball 2000

The right of Michael Kimball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Source ISBN: 9780007292073

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007394913

Version: 2016-01-12

Dedication (#ulink_0ab0d149-1a5e-57fc-bb30-39bee8a1e514)

For Bompa

Epigraph (#ulink_2ff0fc1e-5974-51dc-8a28-62aaadf5bca9)

The baby lived inside a world that was smaller and older where they still traveled by carriage and spoke a bawling language.

Bompa

The bawling language was small and died inside the baby and inside the bodies of everybody who could hear it.

Bompa

whah whaahh uuhhh dahhh dadadadada mabadaduwigo

My Little Brother

Contents

Cover (#u3b32b5e2-069d-59ff-a909-b3fd2741307a)

Title Page (#u7dbe362d-a3a6-57f2-af83-088c218665a6)

Copyright (#u54a79bc6-ecb7-5db2-9bc5-6d3300e77500)

Dedication (#u0c0f91fb-9ffb-5b51-aef9-79f1a918a36a)

Epigraph (#u53ff0cd2-7e08-5c79-ae0f-1ca7657d1da4)

The Whole Way We Got There (#u3162d4e1-68ac-5b55-ac2f-ce593764f8b5)

Living Anymore in Mineola (#u7686274b-e6a0-50eb-998a-647f60c7ee0f)

My Doll-Family, My People-Family, the Sun Outside, My Little Brother’s Insides, the Big-People, and How They Could Have Made Me Another One of My Little Brother (#u10f9e04a-990d-5170-b775-b04757aecf6f)

Our House in Mineola (#u4c90a162-c66d-5dcd-b4de-9b3d95987af7)

The Baby-Sized Hole Inside the Ground and Dirt-World and the Toy Box with My Little Brother Inside It (#ue20b71ef-4966-5ed5-a749-484d98411d01)

Mineola to Birthrock (#u849ca2a9-b281-5c27-b05a-fa7445ab0c7a)

Our House-Car, Bompa’s House, Going to Heaven, and When We Could Start Living Again (#u49686783-142e-59c8-8980-72739db1bff2)

Birthrock to Stringtown (#litres_trial_promo)

Some More Ways Dolls Keep People Alive, the Way You Go Away from Doll to People and Bigger, and the Big-People We Were Going to Grow Up into and Live Them (#litres_trial_promo)

Stringtown to Albion (#litres_trial_promo)

My Doll-Me, My People-Me, and the Way My Doll-Family Got Away (#litres_trial_promo)

Albion to Hot Springs (#litres_trial_promo)

How to Cut Dolls and People Out of Paper, Crayon-Faces, the String that Holds People Together, Holding Hands Together, and One More Way Any Family Can Break (#litres_trial_promo)

Hot Springs to North Little Rock (#litres_trial_promo)

House-Cars, Car-People, the Safety-Bars that Saved Me and My Bigger Brother, Some More Ways We Got Some of Everything Back, and Why Everybody Needs to Stop and Rest or They Will Break (#litres_trial_promo)

North Little Rock to Campbell Station (#litres_trial_promo)

How You Get the Breath All the Way Down into Momma and the Baby Alive, How Poppa Laid the Babies Down to Sleep and Grow Up Inside Momma, and Why We Kept Waking Each Other Up (#litres_trial_promo)

Campbell Station to Biggerton (#litres_trial_promo)