Short Summary:
We meet Finny Short as an observant, defiant fourteen-year-old who can’t make sense of her family’s unusual habits: Her mother offers guidance appropriate for a forty-year-old socialite; her father quotes Nietzsche over pancakes. Finny figures she’s stuck with this lonely lot until she meets Earl Henckel, a boy who comes from an even stranger place than she does. Unhappy with Finny’s budding romance with Earl, her parents ship her off to Thorndon boarding school. But mischief follows Finny as she befriends New York heiress Judith Turngate, a girl whose charm belies a disquieting reckless streak.
My Review:
FINNY is the story of Finny Short – an unfortunate name for a girl who has quite the unfortunate life, all told.
At first I thought this was going to be a coming-of-age story. The first section of the book had all of the markings of it. Young girl in a strange family, boy next door (who I got the impression was some kind of a dwarf? but he wasn’t or something – still confused on that). Each family member had their own little quirks, their ways of being different.
Then young Finny gets sent off to boarding school because her prim and proper mother finds out she’s been kissing the boy next door. Here we kind of go into some murky waters, testing the whole lesbian thing and, I don’t know if it was intended, but I really was thinking that Judith and her roommate might be moving into some territory here that.. really did not give me the best of feelings, considering the background and the story up to this point.
Time moves on and Finny’s life continues through its ups and downs. Now.. there were parts of the book that I loved and hated at the same time. Justin Kramon wrote with this sort of detached emotion through the book; he matter-of-factly laid out details about Finny’s life and the lives of those around her. It was an odd feeling; feeling so outside of Finny’s world but being so close to Finny – because she really was that engaging and compelling of a character.
Was this book a worthwhile read? I’d say yes, and I’m very glad I was a last minute addition to this tour. I would never have picked up this book otherwise and, when all is said and done, there were moments that this book took me back to my own experiences in life through the emotions and struggles Finny had to deal with.
About the Author
Justin Kramon is the author of the novel Finny(Random House 2010).
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has published stories in Glimmer Train, Story Quarterly, Boulevard, Fence, TriQuarterly, and others. He has received honors from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, Best American Short Stories, the Hawthornden International Writers’ Fellowship, and the Bogliasco Foundation.
He teaches at Gotham Writers’ Workshop in New York City and at the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio.
He lives in Philadelphia.
To learn more please visit Justin Kramon’s website.
For more reviews of the book, please follow the book tour.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from TLC Book Tours. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”
