Kinder's range is impressive. The breadth of setting, tonality, and character varies greatly from one story to the next, yet there is a deliberate flatness and matter of fact veneer to these stories that reflect, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it, one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence." — Lynn Cline, OzarksWatch Magazine
R.M. Kinder’s gift for creating meaningful characters is marked by her awareness of complexities continually at work in every person and by the mysterious alchemies of need, will, and fortune that shape our relationships, including those we share with animals. A Common Person and Other Stories ... reveals a writer of mature range, one whose discernment of human and creaturely existence is anything but common.
--C.D. Albin, author of Hard Toward Home, Southern Literary Review
These stories do what fiction tends to do at its best—expose the sublime beauty and tragedy of everyday life. -- Evan Wood Missouri Life
A Common Person and Other Stories is a rich and rewarding book. . . . If you're a lover of the short story, this collection is work tracking down and putting on your shelf. -- Steve Wiegenstein, author of Scattered Lights (Full Review)
A Common Person is a skillfully touching collection of stories. Dale Singer, St. Louis Today.
An inherently absorbing, impressively original, and memorably written com-pendium of short stories by an exceptionally talented author, A Common Person and Other stories is an especially and unreservedly recommended addition to community, college, and university library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections. -- Midwest Book Review
“Known as a regionalist, a rural writer, and a realist . . . most of [Kinder’s] stories are about the struggles of ordinary people. . . . Some of [the stories] are light, all of them have a serious thread, and every one of them is about working-class, brave people making their life with honor and nobility.” ― Faith Bemiss, Sedalia Democrat
"Kinder from everyday life forges sincere, powerful revelations about what goes into being human, sometimes in glory and sometimes in shame, and told always with a genius for emotional honesty that eschews the maudlin in favor of the real." ― Jack Ventimiglia, Richmond News
"The third illuminating collection of short fiction from R.M. Kinder thoughtfully explores how people are shaped by simple heroism and fateful encounters." ― Angela Lutz, Shelf Awareness
Even in the darker stories, Rose Marie Kinder’s trademark strengths can be found in abundance: narratives that unfold with ease and end at exactly the right moment, spot-on dialogue, a keen eye for the emotional landscape and generosity of heart. Like all fine story writers―from Mansfield to Munro―Kinder knows, from the writer’s perspective, there is no such thing as an unremarkable life. ― Catherine Browder, author of Now We Can All Go Home
These clear-eyed, daring, delicate, and deeply organic stories hum with animal vitality: dogs and snakes, gunplay and witchcraft, music and tornadoes. Rose Marie Kinder has a fearless heart; she approaches the human condition without preconceptions, and the result is a collection of startling wisdom and piercing beauty. ― Trudy Lewis, author of The Empire Rolls
R.M. Kinder may be a modern-day Katherine Anne Porter with a vein of Flannery O’Connor darkness squiggling throughout, but she puts me most in mind of Lucia Berlin in sensibility and droll intelligence. These stories illuminate the lives of a big swath of beleaguered Americans—the common persons; they are ironic without bitterness and moving without sentimentality. Kinder manages to bolster our hope for humanity, even as she doesn’t flinch from the hard face of 21st century reality. A Common Person and Other Stories is full of heart, generosity and absolutely stunning writing. It deserves all its prizes! -- Karen Brennan, author of Monsters
Reading a Rose Marie Kinder story is like plunging your face into a clear, cold, spring-fed stream. Everything is changed, refreshed, and revelatory. Her beautiful new collection, A Common Person and Other Stories, is a constant, thrilling reminder of magic and power that reside in the people—and the animals—that surround us every day. – Whitney Terrell, author of The Good Lieutenant.
A Common Person and Other Stories, a collection of short stories by R. M. Kinder, was selected by the University of Notre Dame's Creative Writing Program as the thirteenth winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize for short fiction. Judge Valerie Sayers, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English, calls the prize-winning collection a "knock-out" that "honors ordinary lives as it gracefully accretes striking images and motifs for tension and impact."― https://english.nd.edu/news/r-m-kinder-wins-sullivan-prize.
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