{"id":4566,"date":"2025-10-24T11:27:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=4566"},"modified":"2025-10-24T11:27:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T11:27:00","slug":"starred-book-review-the-ten-thousand-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=4566","title":{"rendered":"STARRED Book Review: The Ten Thousand Things"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Ten Thousand Things<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

by Debbi Flittner<\/p>\n

Genre:<\/strong> Memoir<\/p>\n

ISBN: <\/strong>9798992424218<\/p>\n

Print Length:<\/strong> 290 pages<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Reviewed by Lauren Hayataka<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>A moving transformation of silence into memory and art<\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cHow can I make sense of my early life, a time of turmoil that I often feel but don\u2019t clearly remember?\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So begins Debbi Flittner\u2019s The Ten Thousand Things, a deeply felt memoir that traces the fissures of family, silence, and belonging across generations. It lingers in fragments\u2014half-remembered moments, desert storms, the hush of a house where love was always just out of reach\u2014and yet together, those fragments form something whole and unforgettable.<\/p>\n

This memoir is Flittner\u2019s lifelong attempt to understand her mother, a woman described as \u201celusive, unnerving,\u201d<\/em><\/strong> who rarely spoke and never offered the certainty of affection her daughters craved. As a child, Flittner endured neglect, abuse from an older sister, and a father whose anger simmered over, all while her mother turned away.<\/p>\n

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Silence becomes the refrain of her early years: a missing comfort, a missing response, a missing steadiness. And yet, in the vast, red rock desert of the Colorado Plateau, she found a kind of companionship. Lizards, sagebrush, and sandstone became her refuge, a parallel world where the rules were clear and she could be both wild and safe.<\/p>\n

What elevates The Ten Thousand Things is the lyricism of its prose. Flittner writes with the precision of someone who has carried these memories for decades, shaping them into vivid, almost cinematic scenes: hiding beneath plastic during a sudden storm, watching rain blur the world into a secret cave; lying in the plastic-covered back seat of the family\u2019s Buick as the desert slid past; screaming for help in a kitchen where no one came. Even as an adult, she recalls the \u201ccoyote trickster\u201d<\/em><\/strong> who stole her courage every time she crossed her mother\u2019s threshold, a terribly fitting metaphor for the silence that bound them.<\/p>\n

As she grows older, Flittner both follows and resists the patterns of her family. She marries young and becomes a mother early, yet she also steps onto a different path\u2014pursuing higher education, the first in her family to attend law school. She raises her daughter while balancing classes and work, determined to offer choices she herself never had. Later, her search takes her further still, into spiritual practice\u2014studying Tibetan Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, traveling through Tibet and Nepal, discovering moments of Oneness that begin to soften the old ache.<\/p>\n

Flittner writes movingly of her attempts to bridge that silence in adulthood. Visits to her mother\u2019s home bring fleeting moments of warmth\u2014a smile when the car pulls up, a brief embrace, a short-lived conversation\u2014before the old patterns reassert themselves. Even in the final months of her mother\u2019s life, when dementia strips away some of her defenses, Flittner remains suspended between longing and acceptance.<\/p>\n

Yet, Flittner does not reduce her mother to a single role or judgment; instead, she allows space for contradiction. Her mother was both absent and proud, both neglectful and shaped by her own wounds\u2014poverty, abandonment, disfigured feet from shoes too small in childhood, outstanding service in the Navy during World War II. Flittner doesn\u2019t write to solve her mother but to live honestly within the myriad of questions she left behind.<\/p>\n

In doing so, the book also becomes an exploration of inheritance. Pain, silence, and resilience are passed down through generations, shaping daughters as much as love or guidance might. Flittner acknowledges this with striking clarity: we transmit our fortunes and our misfortunes through what we say and through what we leave unsaid.<\/p>\n

The Ten Thousand Things is not a memoir of despair but of transformation. Flittner\u2019s voice is lyrical without ever losing its honesty, capable of holding both the beauty of desert light at dusk and the ache of unanswered questions. By the book\u2019s end, what remains is not a single revelation about her mother but something larger: an understanding that silence, too, shapes us, and that even in absence, there can be meaning. It is a radiant, unforgettable memoir\u2014one that transforms longing into art.<\/p>\n

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Thank you for reading Lauren Hayataka\u2019s book review of The Ten Thousand Things <\/em>by Debbi Flittner! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.<\/p>\n

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The post STARRED Book Review: The Ten Thousand Things<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ten Thousand Things by Debbi Flittner Genre: Memoir ISBN: 9798992424218 Print Length: 290 pages Amazon Bookshop Reviewed by Lauren Hayataka A moving transformation of silence into memory and art \u201cHow can I make sense of my early life, a time of turmoil that I often feel but don\u2019t clearly remember?\u201d So begins Debbi Flittner\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}