From the Publisher
Epic in scope, Tiny Americans is a poignant examination of the ties that bind a family, and how enduring those ties may be.” — Kathleen Barber, author of Are You Sleeping
“Devin Murphy is a writer who can do it all. With Tiny Americans, he gives us the Thurbers, some of the most complicated, most endearing, and most memorable characters I’ve ever read. The smallest details of their lives are vested, effortlessly, with enormous power and exquisite prose. I turned the pages, breathless, and yet the scope of the novel is nothing short of epic. When people say fiction is true, this is the kind of story they mean—wherever you are and whenever you read it, you’ll see that Tiny Americans is the thing that you needed.” — Nicholas Mainieri, author of The Infinite
“Absorbing and affecting, Devin Murphy’s Tiny Americans looks unflinchingly at a family’s early unraveling and tracks how such sorrow reverberates over the years. But in moments large and small, we also glimpse the characters’ great capacity for love and an aching hope for forgiveness and connection. A sweeping and powerful family novel.” — Bryn Chancellor, author of Sycamore
“Luminous, tender, and wise, Tiny Americans is a strikingly realistic evocation of what makes and unmakes and remakes a family.” — Emily Danforth, author of The Miseducation of Cameron Post
“A mesmerizing second novel [with] an emotional and beautifully rendered denouement that readers will long remember.” — Booklist
“Though permeated with melancholy, the narrative is buoyed by exquisite details and the sense that forgiveness may be possible even if redemption is out of reach… A satisfying chronicle of fraught family dynamics.” — Shelf Awareness
“An entrancing second novel from a bestselling writer building a well-deserved reputation for beautiful prose, emotional insight, and the moral complexity of his fiction. This novel is the perfect read for fans of the film Boyhood and readers of Willy Vlautin, Denis Johnson, Roddy Doyle, and Annie Proulx.” — KFDS, Texoma’s Homepage
“A complex and powerful story of family, forgiveness, and reconciliation... Moving and real.” — Sarah, Parnassus Books (Nashville)
Texoma’s Homepage KFDS
“An entrancing second novel from a bestselling writer building a well-deserved reputation for beautiful prose, emotional insight, and the moral complexity of his fiction. This novel is the perfect read for fans of the film Boyhood and readers of Willy Vlautin, Denis Johnson, Roddy Doyle, and Annie Proulx.
Booklist
A mesmerizing second novel [with] an emotional and beautifully rendered denouement that readers will long remember.
Parnassus Books (Nashville) Sarah
A complex and powerful story of family, forgiveness, and reconciliation... Moving and real.
Shelf Awareness
Though permeated with melancholy, the narrative is buoyed by exquisite details and the sense that forgiveness may be possible even if redemption is out of reach… A satisfying chronicle of fraught family dynamics.
Bryn Chancellor
Absorbing and affecting, Devin Murphy’s Tiny Americans looks unflinchingly at a family’s early unraveling and tracks how such sorrow reverberates over the years. But in moments large and small, we also glimpse the characters’ great capacity for love and an aching hope for forgiveness and connection. A sweeping and powerful family novel.
Emily Danforth
Luminous, tender, and wise, Tiny Americans is a strikingly realistic evocation of what makes and unmakes and remakes a family.
Kathleen Barber
Epic in scope, Tiny Americans is a poignant examination of the ties that bind a family, and how enduring those ties may be.
Nicholas Mainieri
Devin Murphy is a writer who can do it all. With Tiny Americans, he gives us the Thurbers, some of the most complicated, most endearing, and most memorable characters I’ve ever read. The smallest details of their lives are vested, effortlessly, with enormous power and exquisite prose. I turned the pages, breathless, and yet the scope of the novel is nothing short of epic. When people say fiction is true, this is the kind of story they mean—wherever you are and whenever you read it, you’ll see that Tiny Americans is the thing that you needed.
Booklist
A mesmerizing second novel [with] an emotional and beautifully rendered denouement that readers will long remember.
Parnassus Books (Nashville) Sarah
A complex and powerful story of family, forgiveness, and reconciliation... Moving and real.
Kirkus Reviews
2018-12-11
A grim portrait of the forces that derail an American family whose members find that forgiveness might take much of a lifetime.
By the time the three Thurber siblings are growing up in western New York state in the late 1970s, the region's economic woes have bred poverty, toughness, and cruelty. Their parents' drinking leads to "fights that ripped us clean of our flesh and left only raw notes of nerve ends," says Jamie, the only daughter. The boys, Lewis and Connor, play a "violent, cruel sort of football." The mother, Catrin, is an artist whose "sadness haunted her." Her husband, Terrance, decides the only way he can save himself and the kids from his alcoholism is to leave. In chapters spanning the years 1978 to 2018 and narrated mostly by the siblings, Murphy (The Boat Runner, 2017, etc.) takes disconnected snapshots of lives scarred by brutality, broken marriages, loneliness, and misfortune. Lewis goes to sea for years, with the Navy and as a merchant mariner. Connor glimpses domestic normalcy, but birds keep smashing into his picture windows. Jamie's husband returns from military service badly wounded and then they lose a baby right after her birth. Terrance falls in love with a woman who is bipolar, and he's electrocuted while working, one of four nasty accidents that befall family members. He hopes he can use the financial settlement to persuade his children to visit him. There are gaps of several years between chapters and little to link them but brief references to a sibling or parent. The fragmentation is fitting but results in something that can feel more like a short story collection than a novel.
The structure is challenging, and Murphy has a tendency to overwrite in fraught moments, a risk that comes from emotional honesty and trying to make the bleak eloquent.
