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In the Seam

Name: In the Seam
Author: Kirk James Folk
ISBN: 978-0-9965159-1-7

by Kirk James Folk ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 24, 2015

An overly chaotic tale from a wondrous wordsmith.

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A group of unlikely allies tries to escape from Limbo in Folk’s debut novel.

Welcome to the Seam, “a way station between life as you know it, and death.” The essences of people who are unconscious or comatose go there, and they may or may not be allowed to return to the world they knew. Nine-year-old Frank Frandoza is one of those essences trying to get back to the real world, where the last thing he remembers is the ceiling of his underground fort crashing down upon him. Imagine his surprise waking up in the Seam, with seven talking barracudas swimming around him in midair. He finds an ally in Ivan Blastov, a “cool kid” from his hometown who was recently felled in a brawl by a glass bottle to the head. Frank and Ivan must navigate the surreal, absurdist world of the Seam, populated with such entities as a gorilla in a nurse’s uniform and a polar bear in a leotard. Through an unlikely plan involving electrocution and the formation of a rock band, they manage to return to the real world. The only problems are the difficulties awaiting them there—and all the people still being detained in the Seam. Folk is a writer of unending imagination, spewing puns and ridiculous characters on page after page: “Lou was a human remora attached to a nose. If Lou had been a rock star, his name would have been Schnozzy Schnosbourne, and his stage would have been Nostrilpalooza.” The story is accompanied by full-color illustrations (also by Folk) that are somehow even odder than his literary creations—simultaneously creepy, silly, and brutally adorable. Readers may feel ungrateful for becoming frustrated with such ingenuity, but after a while, there’s simply too much: the plot can’t keep pace with Folk’s manic creations, and the supposedly life-and-death stakes never truly feel urgent. For all the tireless punning, readers may lose interest before the writer does.

An overly chaotic tale from a wondrous wordsmith.

Pub Date: July 24, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-9965159-1-7

Page Count: 226

Publisher: Eye Read Books

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.