Somehow Form a Family: Stories That Are Mostly True

They're right. Tony Earley is a writer so good at his craft that you don't read his words so much as inhale them. His first book of nonfiction is one of those unexpected classics, like Ann Lamott's Traveling Mercies, in which a great writer rips open his/her heart and takes the reader inside for a no-holds-barred tour.

In a prose style that is deceptively simple, Earley confronts the big things-God, death, civilization, family, his own clinical depression-with wit and grace, without looking away or smirking.

The American genius for language lies in understatement...Earley has the courage to return to artistic first principals: clarity, balance, ease. (The New York Times Book Review)

Tony Earley's view of the world is from the edge, at the cusp. Which is what this collection of personal essays is about - about how he stands with one foot in the rural mountains of his birth and upbringing and the other in the Brady Bunch's split-level.

Born thirty-nine years ago, Earley was too late to be a Baby Boomer, too soon to be a Gen Xer. He grew up in the North Carolina mountains but says, "I go around telling anyone who will listen that I am from the country, but deep down I know it's a lie. I grew up on Gilligan's Island, in Mayberry, I'm not sure where."

In a prose style that is deceptively simple (E. B. White comes to mind), Earley confronts the big things - death, civilization, family, his own clinical depression - with wit and grace, without looking away or smirking. He writes about how he's neither an adherent to the fundamentalism of his boyhood nor an unbeliever, and about how hard it is to find your place in the world without letting go of your authenticity.

Clearly having lost patience with irony, Tony Earley is on a journey from faith, through disbelief, and into a new faith.and a new family. And he is a writer so good at his craft that you don't read his words so much as inhale them. His first book of nonfiction is one of those unexpected classics in which a great writer rips open his heart and takes the reader inside for a no-holds-barred tour.

Library Journal

Somehow Form a Family proved to be a pleasant surprise to a reviewer who found Earley's Jim the Boy rather flat. This offering consists of stories, some fictional, others from his boyhood and more recent life, that should prove fascinating to adult listeners his age or older. Earley strikes some chords with tales related to growing up with black-and-white TV, parents separating, death of a close relative, coming of age and contemplating suicide in college, or simply being a rascally kid. There are both intimately confessional details of the author's search for spirituality and wry observations on the hype, madness, and marketing of an around-the-world record flight aboard an Air France Concorde. These stories will stick with the listener for quite some time. The work is written and read with care, expression, and the appropriate humor or irony by Earley. A fine addition to general adult collections; highly recommended. Cliff Glaviano, Bowling Green State Univ. Libs., OH Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Tony Earley was selected by Granta as one of today's best young writers, The New Yorker featured him in its best young fiction writers issue, and his first novel, Jim the Boy, became a national best-seller. He is also the author of a highly praised collection of short stories, Here We Are in Paradise. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife and teaches writing at Vanderbilt University.