Jim Tomlinson

Jim Tomlinson's previous book of short stories, Things Kept, Things Left Behind, won the prestigious Iowa Short Fiction Award and received enthusiastic reviews. The New York Times compared the strong sense of place in Tomlinson's writing to that found in the works of Flannery O'Connor and Alice Munro. The stories in his new collection, Nothing Like An Ocean, also reflect Tomlinson's awareness of place, revisiting the fictional town of Spivey, a community in rural Appalachia where the characters confront difficult circumstances and, with quiet dignity, try to do what is right. In the title story, Tomlinson explores themes of forgiveness and acceptance in the lives of two characters, Alton Wood, a high school math teacher isolated by grief, and his sister Fran, who is emotionally paralyzed by her part in a tragic death. The two take halting steps back into the world after Alton receives an anonymous invitation to a church singles dance. These themes also underlie "Angel, His Rabbit, and Kyle McKell," which tells of Dempsie's evening with two men -- her volatile boyfriend and the recently returned Iraq War amputee whose secret she has been keeping. Loss and the inevitability of change recur in Tomlinson's stories. In "Overburden," Ben, a man simultaneously contemplating AARP membership and impending fatherhood, travels with his wife, Sarah, back to eastern Kentucky to visit the oak tree that was essential to their courtship, only to find the site as barren and featureless as the moon, a casualty of mountaintop removal mining. "So Exotic" draws us into the worn environs of Rita's Huddle In Café, where the owner becomes the confidant of Quilla, a mousy bank teller who blossoms as the muse of an eccentric artist from Belarus. The eleven stories in Nothing Like An Ocean evoke a strong sense of small-town Kentucky life, finding humor in the residents' foibles while never diminishing their inner lives. Tomlinson's masterful fiction captures light and dark moments, moments that are foreign yet deeply familiar, as his characters seek redemption and sometimes find unexpected grace..

Stories

Nothing Like an Ocean

This study offers a distinctive new account of British economic life since the Second World War, focussing upon the ways in which successive governments, in seeking to manage the economy, have sought simultaneously to "manage the people": to try and manage popular understanding of economic issues. In doing so, governments have sought not only to shape expectations for electoral purposes but to construct broader narratives about how "the economy" should be understood. The starting point of this work is to ask why these goals have been focussed upon (and differentially over time), how they have been constructed to appeal to the population, and, insofar as this can be assessed, how far the population has accepted these narratives. The first half of the book analyses the development of the major narratives from the 1940s onwards, addressing the notion of "austerity" and its particular meaning in the 1940s; the rise of a narrative of 'economic decline from the late 1950s, and the subsequent attempts to "modernize" the economy; the attempts to "roll back the state" from the 1970s; the impact of ideas of "globalization" in the 1900s; and, finally, the way the crisis of 2008/9 onward was constructed as a problem of "debts and deficits." The second part of the book focuses on four key issues in attempts to "manage the people: productivity, the balance of payments, inflation, and unemployment. It shows how, in each case, governments sought to get the populace to understand these issues in a particular light, and shaped strategies to that end.

Narratives of Economic Life in Britain from Beveridge to Brexit

Managing the Economy, Managing the People

The stories in Things Kept, Things Left Behind explore the ambiguities of kept secrets, the tangles of abandoned pasts, and uneasy accommodations. Jim Tomlinson’s characters each face the desire to reclaim dreams left behind, along with something of the dreamer that was also lost. Starkly rendered, these spiraling characters inhabit a specific place and class---small-town Kentucky, working-class America---but the stories, told in all their humor and tragedy, are universal.In each story the characters face conflict, sometimes within themselves, sometimes with each other. Each carries a past and with it an urge to return and repair. In “First Husband, First Wife,” ex-spouses are repeatedly drawn together by a shared history they cannot seem to escape, and they are finally forced to choose between leaving the past or leaving each other. LeAnn and Cass are grown sisters who conspire to help their prideful mother in “Things Kept.” “Prologue” is a voyeuristic journey through the surprisingly different lives of two star-crossed friends, each with its successes and pitfalls, told through their letters over thirty-five years. In “Stainless,” Annie and Warren divide their possessions on the final night of their marriage. Their realtor has advised them to “declutter” the house they are leaving, but they discover that most of the clutter cannot be so easily removed. The choices are never simple, and for every thing kept, something must be abandoned. Tomlinson’s characters struggle but eventually find their way, often unknowingly, to points of departure, to places where things just might change.

Things Kept, Things Left Behind

Jim Phillips

Valerie Wright

Exploring the social, cultural and political implications of deindustrialisation in twentieth-century Scotland

Deindustrialisation and the Moral Economy in Scotland Since 1955

This major new addition to Cambridge Studies in Modern Economic History analyses the economic policies of the Attlee Government, incorporating already published literature and much new research. It integrates the politics of economic policy-making with the economic arguments. It stresses the importance of the government's drive for efficiency, and strongly questions the claim that in building a 'welfare state' the government neglected production. It is the first comprehensive account of the Attlee government's economic policies.

Jim Tomlinson

Books

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