I recently discovered this author via The New Yorker podcast where he read his short story, The Backpack which was truly incredible - the kind of prose I live to read/listen to. The only thing keeping this book from being 5 stars is the story about the cat which made me physically ill. ( )

SOMEHOW FORM A FAMILY, by Tony Earley.

Having read Tony Earley's sweet and nostalgic novel, JIM THE BOY, I was not prepared for the darker content of these autobiographical essays about his less than happy childhood and the bouts of clinical depression that have plagued him periodically as a teen and adult. The title of this 2001 collection of "Stories that Are Mostly True" is an ironic nod to a line from THE BRADY BUNCH theme song. Growing up in the 60s and 70s in a small town in North Carolina, Earley remembers not just the pervasive influence of television and shows like The Brady Bunch, Gomer Pyle and Gilligan's Island, but also shares bitter and confused memories of the discord between his parents and his father's absences when he would move out, sometimes for months at a time. But another event which continues to haunt him is the death of his younger sister in a grisly auto accident when he was a freshman in college and she a senior in high school.

Much of this is revealed in the title essay, which is perhaps the best and most affecting of the bunch. Reading it, I often found myself chuckling and wincing simultaneously But I found all of the pieces here to be provocative food for thought, as Earley examines his life - the importance of extended family and forebears ("Hallway"), the oddities of southern dialects and word usage ("The Quare Gene"), and his exposure and changing attitudes toward religion ("A Worn Path" Earley was raised Baptist, but married an Episcopalian). "The Courting Garden" offers a glimpse of that transition and how he and his wife met.

The two weakest stories here were, I thought, "Ghost Stories" and "Tour de Fax." Well, actually, they are well-written and interesting enough, but didn't seem to really fit into the collection as smoothly as the other pieces did. That said, I was, for the most part, charmed by the wry, self-deprecating sense of humor that infused these 'stories,' from a young man who was/is, in many ways, "from" the country, but not "of" the country.

Tony Earley is, no question, a fine writer. I enjoyed this book tremendously. Very highly recommended. (four and a half stars) ( )

I heard him speak at Lipscomb not long after this was published. He was well received, as was this beguiling collection of short stories--;pus an unexpected trip around the world at the end of the book.

Earley describes these as stories that are mostly true, and either way, they are gems. The stories describe a boyhood, an extended family and passages into uneasy adulthood that resonate with truth of feeling. The style is simple, declarative and evocative of more innocent times on the cusp of modern times. My favorites are "Somehow Form a Family", describing the author's growing up and family life to the background of the 1960's and 1970's shows they watched, "Hallway", how the structure of a house can help shape the family that inhabits it, and "The Courting Garden", which may be the truest and most hopeful description of courtship and marriage I've ever read. But there is not a single weak story here ("Ghost Stories" and "The Quare Gene" come close), and I think Earley may be the most intriguing new writer to come along in the past decade or so. ( )

Pretty darn good. Never heard about this one when it came out but stumbled onto it browsing audiobooks. Author reads it himself, which added much to it in my estimation. The kind of self-knowledge exhibited by the author in some of these pieces is one of the primary benefits of genealogy.