Little Miseries: This is not a story about my childhood by Kimberly Olson Fakih, is a novel of harrowing tales intricately woven with nostalgic childhood memories, making for complex storytelling that will have the reader thinking of these characters for a long time after the book is set down. Told in what feels like a series of short stories, the novel captures the memories of Kimmy, raised in the American Midwest in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. As one of three children growing up in a nuclear family home, with extended family from both sides zigzagging in and out of their daily lives, Kimmy recalls her own experiences, but also exists in the role of observer.
Although this novel plays with form to some degree, giving us a slightly disconnected series of events where the through line is not always perfectly visible, this style wonderfully represents the unruliness of memories. I suspect that the form was intentional in this way, carrying the reader through the experience of understanding hidden truths as age and maturity and a better understanding of the world eventually allow. Although some of Kimmy’s memories are positive – the fun of summers at the lake, for instance – as she grows older, more and more painful truths are recognized and, with time, faced. There are truths of the world that Kimmy understands from newspapers, and truths of her family that she can only see
with time and experience. Personally, this style of writing drew me into the experience of Kimmy’s memories, clear and vivid, but still muddled with the complexity of youth and innocence.
A remarkable representation of how memories flicker and falter – where childhood questions are raised and ignored, or inadequate answers simply accepted – Fakih delivers a narrative of growth and understanding from the viewpoint of an observer. Full of tragedy and secrets and lies so often told within families, this story is both heartbreaking and impeccably told.