CELTICLADY'S REVIEWS: Things Too Big To Name by Molly Best Tinsley Book Tour and Giveaway! @mbtinsley

Things Too Big To Name by Molly Best Tinsley

Publisher: Fuze Publishing (August 30, 2019)

Category: Literary Mystery, Psychological Drama

Tour dates: Sept. & Oct, 2019

ISBN: 978-1733034401

Available in Print and ebook, 289 pages

Description Things Too Big To Name by Molly Best Tinsley

Margaret Torrens trades academia for early retirement and the solitude of a cabin in the Oregon mountains. Four months later, she is locked in a ward for the criminally insane undergoing assessment, and a charge of murder is in the air. Pried out of her by an impatient young psychologist, Margaret's story features Jane Farrow--a former student, who showed up at the cabin uninvited with an odd, mute child in tow--and Victor--Margaret's alleged victim, who put his claim on both. As Margaret works to control this narrative of the recent past, she is waylaid by secrets, borne by the ghost of her young husband, lost decades before.

Read an excerpt from the chapter "Where I Choose to Begin":

There is a point to this, Alec: if nothing else, it says something about the nature of shock, how it prevents you from realizing you’re in it. You keep on going, thinking nothing has changed. Then, though not heretofore psychotic, you might begin, after a period of holding things together, to behave in odd ways. I reheated the pot of lentil soup and smeared a rice cake with almond butter. I dropped the knife in the process, and some soup spilled when I ladled it into the bowl. My arms were vibrating like tuning forks.

It took me forever to push 9-1-1, then another forever to explain my situation to the voice on the line. I could tell from its reaction that I wasn’t making sense, so I hung up. And that’s when I heard a second voice, hollowed by space and time but so familiar that it whacked that main nerve that begins with a V—the one that keeps you upright. “Hello, Midge,” is all it said, deep and intimate as a cello, and in turning around, I wound up on the floor.

Brutus was there for me, panting his canine halitosis. I eased his muzzle away from my face, gave it a little pat, and he trotted over to his water bowl, nails nicking the bare wood. There he slurped intently, as if the center of the room were not shimmering—a mirage in the desert—making my heart pump hard and cold.

“Midge?” I heard again.

After about an hour, I whispered, “Margaret. I go by Margaret now.”

In the following silence, I heard reprimand: Why in the world would you want to do that? But then the voice said, “Margaret. Rhymes with consequential.” Its tone was playful. The ripple in the air was anchored to one of the two remaining chairs at the kitchen table. Its borders got a little sharper.

I did think, I’ve hurt my brain, knocked it crazy. Still, “I’m not myself,” I said aloud then repeated what I’d told the 9-1-1 voice: “There’s been a bad accident. Maybe a fatal one. There was nothing I could do. A deer ran into my car.”

“So you’re on the rebound.”

There was no question the voice was Ben’s, my late husband, and I decided I shouldn’t cower on the floor but do as he would do: embrace the experience. I pushed myself to my feet and hung onto the kitchen counter, turned my face to the not-quite-empty chair.

“Are you injured?” The voice sounded concerned.

“I think maybe my balance is off.”

The voice gave an amused hah!

I let the rice cake slide off my plate for Brutus and set the soup bowl in the sink. The dog crunched and snuffled as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I wondered, was this, whatever it was, happening because I’d kept that extra chair? I had no plans to invite a guest to my cabin. So why didn’t I donate it with the other two to benefit the Syrian refugees? If I had, would I be eating lentil soup at this moment a bit shaken up, maybe, but all alone? I took a step back, blinked.
Concussion? The rise of a guilty conscience? Or an actual ghost? I didn’t bother to ask myself the last question, the answer seemed so obvious. Over the next week, though, I began to wonder that too.

I cleared my throat. “Why now?”

A flurry of laughter. “It’s all now.”

“I don’t think so. Time runs out. Why I quit my job.”

“What I mean is I’m always here.”

It’s the type of comment you hear a lot in Pine Springs, where before the invasion of AARP liberals, the long-time, back-to-the-land residents crafted their New Age mantras for every occasion, comforting but incapable of proof. “That’s ridiculous,” I said.

“Because you always keep busy.”

“Not anymore.”

“Exactly. You’re ready.”

Ready, ready. The word tolled like a challenge. I didn’t want to accept it, but my heartbeat caught the rhythm. “I’ve run away from it all, Ben. The world’s turned brutal and stupid.”

“Terrible combination.”

A longing swept reason aside. “My God, I miss you.” Words I haven’t let myself even think for years.

“And here I am.”

Call me crazy, Alec, I am not making this up. There I was hanging onto the counter, asking an empty room: “Have you come for a reckoning, some sort of closure?”

“Ah, those things are illusion,” said the voice, as if passing judgment on its own shimmer, which had begun to blur and blend into everything else. “Rooted always in error.”

“Why don’t you turn around?” I said. “So I can be sure it’s you.”

“I am turned around. I’m looking right at you.”

I peeled my eyes, but whatever it was had dulled into air.

Advance Praise Things Too Big To Name by Molly Best Tinsley

“The psychological drama of Things Too Big to Name plunges us into the mind of Professor Margaret Torrens as her plans for rural retirement unravel and she's forced to confront the life choices she’s made since the death of her musician husband years before. One of her first students, Jane Farrow, appears at her mountain cabin with a strange child and asks to be taken in. Days later, disruption threatens to explode in violence when Victor Primo barges in looking for them. Molly Tinsley's distinctive braided narrative offers intense story-telling, studded with surprises, that keeps us on edge until the end.”-Merrill Leffler, poet, Mark the Music and publisher, Dryad Press

“A prickly but appealing narrator unspools events from her recent—and distant—past. The plot’s gradual unfolding vibrates with the tension of unwilling confrontation and detonates with a satisfying jolt. A fun and absorbing read; I zoomed through it. -Allyson Booth, Postcards from the Trenches and Reading The Waste Land from the Bottom Up

“A recently retired English professor must explain to a Qualified Mental Health Professional the events leading to her arrest and commitment to a mental hospital. The more this brilliant psychological thriller excavates the layers of Margaret's mystery, the more we understand how we all hide parts of ourselves. Molly Tinsley's established talent for narrative and her familiarity with classic literature fold into one of the best novels I've read.”-Sheila Bender, poet and memoirist, A New Theology: Turning to Poetry in a Time of Grief.

About Molly Best Tinsley

In an episode of sanity, award winning author, Molly Tinsley resigned from the English faculty at the US Naval Academy and moved west to write full-time. . She is the author of MY LIFE WITH DARWIN (Houghton Mifflin) and THROWING KNIVES (Ohio State University Press), she also co-authored SATAN'S CHAMBER (Fuze Publishing) and the textbook, THE CREATIVE PROCESS (St. Martin's). Her more recent books are the memoir ENTERING THE BLUE STONE and another Victoria Pierce spy thriller, sequel to SATAN'S CHAMBER: BROKEN ANGELS. Her fiction has earned two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sandstone Prize, and the Oregon Book Award. Her fiction has been widely published and her plays have been read and produced nationwide. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.

Website: https://fuzepublishing.com/authors/fiction/molly-best-tinsley/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/molly.b.tinsley
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbtinsley

Guest review by Katy

“Dear Ben” This is how some of the most poignant passages in Molly Best Tinsley's book, “Things Too Big To Name” begin. Margaret, a retired professor living on her own in the mountains, lost her husband years earlier and now writes to him as a way of keeping in her memory everything that they shared. But there is a twist, Margaret is pretty sure that she has seen Ben's ghost in her house.
Tinsley is an excellent storyteller and as creative a writer as I've ever seen. I loved the way she pieced the different sections of the novel together to create a full picture of Margaret's life. By the end I felt so much for the character and her difficult life, and I think as a reader that's all we can really ask for, isn't it?
“Things Too Big To Name” is a perfect title for this book. It sums up the story in such a succinct and beautiful way. Margaret's grief over losing her husband, her choice to segregate herself from society and the sarcastic and sometimes even aggressive way that she responds to the circumstances that she is thrown into in the novel all seemed to stem from a deep unhappiness inside of her. I loved her character, and I think anyone reading this would have a hard time not relating to her on some level. Apart from that, the plot was a roller coaster.
Tinsley gave the perfect amount of information in every chapter to keep you guessing but not reveal the real truth behind the mystery until the last few chapters. I loved how everything came together in the end and tied up. I love bringing all of the little hints that were dropped to a conclusion. Tinsley is a wordsmith of the highest order and this book gets 5 stars all around from me!
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Giveaway Things Too Big To Name by Molly Best Tinsley
This giveaway is for the winner’s choice of one print or ebook copy of the book. Print is open to the U.S. only and ebook is available worldwide. There will be 3 winners. This giveaway ends November 1, 2019, midnight pacific time.

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