title: Wide Blue Yonder: A Novel
author:  Jean Thompson 
description: Domestic tensions deflate into screwball hijinks in this pleasant, if somewhat toothless, debut novel by the author of Who Do You Love: Stories, a 1999 National Book Award finalist for fiction. Set over one summer in Springfield, Ill., the novel follows four characters floundering amid life's disappointments. Elaine is a wry, open-hearted divorce ("so far she had a business that worked, a marriage that didn't, and a daughter who the jury was still out on"). Her daughter, Josie, hates Springfield, hates her parents' divorce, hates her whole life. She wants to skip town, but settles for falling in love with a policeman and scheming to get herself arrested. Elaine and Josie find themselves caring for her ex-husband's doddering great uncle Harvey, a half-blind, compulsive watcher of the Weather Channel. Harvey just wants to be left alone, and he especially wants to avoid the cataract surgery that Elaine insists on. Meanwhile, in California, a violent young man named Rolando steals a car and heads east. A lifetime of abuse from his peers has plunged him into delusional rage. Like the weather systems that Harvey obsessively tracks, he rolls toward Springfield. Thompson's characters are mostly likable, especially the mordant Elaine, determined to muddle through flawed relationships and shoulder her responsibilities, however remote happiness may seem. Unfortunately, the novel loses its edge by the time it reaches its sensational climax. The fury and mute pain of Rolando and Harvey, respectively which start out lending the book its ominous tension are blunted, and the mood tips toward gentle comedy. It's a credit to Thompson that the contrived plot still holds the reader's attention, and that her tidy, optimistic ending never becomes saccharine. Beneath these cheerful shenanigans, a more truthful story seems to stir it's a pity Thompson hasn't let it come to the surface. </P><P>Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.</P>
zlib_text: Praise for National Book Award Finalist Jean Thompson and _Wide Blue Yonder_
  
  
  “Now and again, a novel comes along that is so authentic, so comprehensive in
  its vision that you forget, temporarily, everything you’ve read before. Jean
  Thompson’s _Wide Blue Yonder_ is such a book.”
  
  
  —Lisa Shea, _Elle_
  
  
  “Meticulously engineered, _Wide Blue Yonder_ boasts a wholly cinematic ending.
  Weather of every kind rains in; tenderness tints the horizon.”
  
  
  —Beth Kephart, _Baltimore Sun_
  
  
  “Thompson is a writer of extraordinary intelligence and sensitivity.”
  
  
  —Vince Passaro, _The Oprah Magazine_
  
  
  “Thompson displays a keen eye for everyday details…. [She] creates a warm, wry
  sense of familiarity and a rooting interest in her characters’ progress…. A
  blithe, good-humored book.”
  
  
  —Janet Maslin, _The New York Times_
  
  
  “Thompson’s ability to create a swirl of the strange and the familiar is why
  the novel works on both heart and head.”
  
  
  —Erica Sanders, _People_
  
  
  “Jean Thompson is a writer worthy of [