Every Past Thing

by Pamela Thompson

In 1899, the streets of New York were as unsettled as the heart and mind of Mary Jane Elmer. The ideas of the transcendentalists were still in the air, and thoughts of a second revolution were rising. Emma Goldman spoke to ever-growing numbers of the disenfranchised in Union Square and scandalized the city fathers. Police used horses, clubs and bullets to disperse the crowds. Women were redefining their roles for the coming century. And, near the middle of life, solitary in her marriage to an intractable and distant artist, and still grieving the death of their daughter ten years earlier, Mary struggles to shape a future she can endure.

Derived from the lives of real people, this beautiful novel is a whirlwind of history, art, familial tremors, and personal desire. But beyond its elegance, beyond its historical authenticity, Every Past Thing is an intimate and moving family portrait—and its every brushstroke is marked with longing.

Genres: Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Pamela Thompson received her B.A. from Yale College and her M.F.A. in writing from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has also studied writing at the Writers Voice in New York City and the Bread Loaf writing workshop.

For the last decade, she has been the editorial director at Interlink Books/Olive Branch Press in Northampton. She lives with her husband and two children in Worthington, Massachusetts. An early version of her novel, Every Past Thing, was a finalist in the William Faulkner Novel-in-Progress competition. "

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pam Thompson is an amazingly talented writer. Can't wait for her next book.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't sure through most of this book whether I liked it or not, but I believe I did. The author bases the entire book on a strange and evocative painting by American artist, Edwin Elmer.

[Somer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Every Past Thing is a very complicated book. I can t say that I liked the book as a whole, but the more I read, the more I became wrapped up in the novel. This is not a novel to curl up with on a rainy day and get lost in. It is a very difficult read, at times painfully boring. Pamela Thompson s prose is dense and challenging, but altogether beautiful. She is a very talented writer. She needs to be taken in small bites and savored, chewed on for a bit. By the end of the novel I cared very deeply for Mary and Edwin. Their discontent was palpable, so much that it made me uncomfortable at times. [return][return]One of the things I loved about this novel was the way Thompson revealed little bits at a time about Mary and Elmer s past. You really didn t learn the whole story about the relationship between Mary, Elmer, and Elmer s brother Samuel until the very end.[return][return]I thought she handled Mary s search for Jimmy Roberts, a man she had a brief relationship many years before, artfully. I quote search because I don t feel Mary was really looking for Jimmy as much as hoping she might encounter him. And the near misses were brilliant.[return][return]Thompson s inclusion of Emerson quotes throughout the novel delighted me, although I still find him very difficult to read.[return][return]When I first started this book, up until maybe 2/3 of the way through it, I thought I would never recommend it to anyone. So dry, so difficult. But something happened near the end. I now say, pick it up if you re brave. Be willing to give it some time. Just bury yourself in it, and find Thompson s rhythm. It might surprise you.

[Rosina Lippi · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author stumbled across a painting Smith College Art Museum and it evolved into a novel, this novel. The painting is question is on the dust jacket.

The story is set in Manhattan in a time of great political and social upheaval. Emma Goldman was stirring things up, women were taking advantage of more freedoms, questions were being asked. If you have a time/setting like this, you have to treat it as a character in its own right. Thompson failed to take this opportunity. She writes instead about a woman who is still in mourning for a child she lost years before. Her husband, the painter in question, buries himself in his work leaving her to her own devices.

Internal monologue has to achieve something besides backstory. There is a lot of internal monologue here, too much, really.

All in all, the novel doesn't seem to know what it wants to be, or how to figure that out. Most likely that reflects the author's feelings as she was writing it.

[Liza · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this right after I read Luc Sante's Low Life, and it proved the perfect companion novel. I saw the author speak about it at the Tenement House Museum, and she described falling in love with the painting on the cover of the book (which is at the Smith College Art Museum). She researched the artist and discovered a world she had to try to piece together through fiction. This is the story, and it captures the world of New York in 1899--from those who profit enormously from the Gilded Age to the anarchists hanging out at Justus Schwab's saloon. The prose is extremely dense and detailed, and so it is not an easy read by any means, but the characters and their observations and emotions linger in a way that makes me want to keep this book so I can read it again in a few years. I know I'll see more the second time around.

[Stephy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book because it was about the time period in which my father was born, 1899. I learned so much more. A story populated with names like Emma Goldman and turning on the lynch pin of a young child's death when such thinks were never spoken of after. Haunted by pathological grief, still the sweetness of the story overcomes all this. I recommend it. Highly.

[Gail]

I am not done with this book, so I don't feel I can truly rate it.

I do, however feel I can honestly say that I expect I will not finish this book. The story develops very slowly and the book has some pretty boring and redundant passages in it. I tried several times to finish this one but I really don't care enough about these characters and this story to muscle my way to the end.

[Justine Dymond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, yes, another close friend, and member of my writing group, *but* another very good read, especially if you're interested in women's roles at the turn of 20th c. and the radical left movement that was broiling at the time. Also, this novel is based on a painting at the Smith College Art museum. See the painting, read the book, see the painting, read...

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a great deal to say about this book—but too much for a paragraph. Read it. Write me about it.

[Stephanie Gannon]

A quiet novel about art and artists' lives and loves set in nineteenth century Western Massachusetts.