The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson (Audiobook Review)

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Title: The Year We Left Home
Author: Jean Thompson
Narrator: Cassandra Campbell
Copyright: 2011, Blackstone Audio
Duration: 13 hours, 15 minutes
Genres: general fiction, historical
Filed in: Audiobook Reviews
Review copy provided by Blackstone Audio.

PUBLISHER’S SUMMARY: From National Book Award–finalist Jean Thompson comes a mesmerizing, decades-spanning saga of one ordinary American family - proud, flawed, hopeful - whose story simultaneously captures the turbulent history of the country at large.
In The Year We Left Home, Thompson brings together all of her talents to deliver the career-defining novel her admirers have been waiting for: a sweeping and emotionally powerful story of a single American family during the tumultuous final decades of the twentieth century. It begins in 1973 when the Erickson family of Grenada, Iowa, gathers for the wedding of their eldest daughter, Anita. Even as they celebrate, the fault lines in the family emerge. The bride wants nothing more than to raise a family in her hometown, while her brother Ryan watches restlessly from the sidelines, planning his escape. He is joined by their cousin Chip, an unpredictable, war-damaged loner who will show Ryan both the appeal and the perils of freedom. Torrie, the Ericksons’ youngest daughter, is another rebel intent on escape, but the choices she makes will bring about a tragedy that leaves the entire family changed forever.
Stretching from the early 1970s in the Iowa farmlands to suburban Chicago to the coast of contemporary Italy - and moving through the Vietnam War’s aftermath, the farm crisis, the numerous economic booms and busts - The Year We Left Home follows the Erickson siblings as they confront prosperity and heartbreak, setbacks and triumphs, and seek their place in a country whose only constant seems to be breathtaking change. Ambitious, richly told, and fiercely American, this is a vivid and moving meditation on our continual pursuit of happiness and an incisive exploration of the national character.
Jean Thompson is the author of Who Do You Love: Stories, a 1999 National Book Award finalist for fiction; City Boy; and Wide Blue Yonder, a New York Times Notable Book and Chicago Tribune Best Fiction selection for 2002. She lives in Urbana, Illinois.
©2011 Jean Thompson (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: The Year We Left Home wasn’t quite what I expected after reading that excellent publisher’s summary. This is supposed to be the story of an ordinary American family. Apparently Jean Thompson thinks that it’s ordinary for families to hate each other and rarely speak to one another. I know there are families like that, but is it ordinary?
The Year We Left Home is a series of vignettes centered on the Erickson family, from small-town Iowa. The perspective changes from one family member to another, and from one year to another, covering about thirty years in all. Some of the snapshots are interesting, some are not; some make sense, some don’t. Most of the scenes end with something violent or shocking. I can see that Thompson is trying to create some suspense, but most of the time it felt like she was just being deliberately cruel to the characters for no other reason than to invoke an emotional response from the reader. Unfortunately, the author didn’t develop the characters enough for me to really feel much for them.
All that aside, I think the thing that bothered me most about this book, was that it was so excessively pessimistic. Typical families have good times and bad times, but Thompson always focused in on the very worst times of the Erickson family. The opening scene, for instance, is a wedding, which should be a happy time, but it’s told from the perspective of the bride’s brother, who hates her and is not happy at all. That scene sets the tone for the entire book, not a single happy moment to be found. Even a vacation to Italy comes out badly: it’s too crowded, the kids are whiney, the rental car gets stolen. It’s kind of depressing.
The book isn’t all bad though. Like I said, some of the snapshots of the Erickson family were interesting, in that I grew up in much the same time period, and in much the same environment, that of a small farming community. Thompson touches briefly on the news headlines of the times: Vietnam, the attempted assassination on President Reagan, the farm crisis of the early ‘80’s, the Bush-Gore election fiasco. Most of these historical references were interesting, and mostly accurate as far as I could tell, but again Thompson chose all negative events to focus on.
Cassandra Campbell’s narration of The Year We Left Home was absolutely fine. Her pacing and dialogue were good, and her tone matched that of the book very well. I did a quick internet search for Cassandra Campbell to see what else she has been involved in, but didn’t really come up with anything.
Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but I think this could have been a darn good book if Thompson had just mixed in a few happy times here and there; made it more like real life in other words. There’s nothing at all wrong with Thompson’s writing skill, it was just the tone of the book that didn’t set well with me.

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Get “The Year We Left Home” by Jean Thompson (Unabridged Audiobook) from Blackstone Audio.

This audiobook review is based on the unabridged audiobook.
Audiobook review by Steven Brandt
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