Nice Things People Have Said

“Dear Everybody has the page-turning urgency of a mystery and the thrilling formal inventiveness of the great epistolary novels. Jonathon Bender's magical letters to the world that never wrote to him are at once whimsical, anguished, funny, utterly engaging and, finally, unforgettable.”
Maud Casey

“In Bender’s unsent letters of apology or thanks, Michael Kimball transforms the familiar into the strange again and the simplest confessions are made moments of sublime wonder. Hold on to this book.”
Christine Schutt

“Michael Kimball's wise-hearted epistolary portrait of an endearingly honest, suicidal depressive is by turns hilarious and haunting--and always thrillingly deep, surprising, and pitch-perfect. Dear Everybody confirms Kimball's reputation as one of our most supremely gifted and virtuosic renderers of the human predicament. It's as moving a novel as I have read in years.”
Gary Lutz

“I love this book, love the strangely detailed world that accumulates through letters, lists, yearbook quotes, and psychological evaluations. And I love the character of Jonathon Bender, the way he makes me so sad and also makes me laugh so hard. He will stay with me forever.”
Jessica Anya Blau

“Dear Michael Kimball:
Thank you for this book. What Jonathon Bender writes in his unsent letters are what each of us longs to say, what all of us have been saying our whole lives, just not out loud.”
Stephen Graham Jones

“In his third novel, Kimball gives us the singular life of Jonathon Bender through a collage of different voices and sources and in beautifully rendered sentences. He mercilessly gives us a sense of the man and his trajectory, bringing us painfully close to Bender himself. This is a compassionate and compelling account of the quiet ways in which a life goes wrong.”
Brian Evenson

DEAR EVERYBODY

Jonathon Bender had something to say, but the world wouldn’t listen. That’s why he writes to everybody he has ever known—his mother and father, his brother and other relatives, his childhood friends and neighbors, the Tooth Fairy, his classmates and teachers, his psychiatrists, his ex-girlfriends, his ex-wife, the state of Michigan, a television station, and a weather satellite. Taken together, these unsent letters tell the remarkable story of Jonathon's life.

“In Bender’s unsent letters of apology or thanks, Michael Kimball transforms the familiar into the strange again and the simplest confessions are made moments of sublime wonder. Hold on to this book.”
Christine Schutt