Frankie Styne & the Silver Man

by Kathy Page

Overview

When Liz Meredith and her new baby move into the middle row-house on Onley Street—Liza having lived for years off-grid in an old railcar—there's more to get used to than electricity and proper plumbing. She's desperate to avoid her well-meaning social worker and her neighbours Alice and Tom, who, for reasons of their own, won't leave her alone. And then there is her other neighbour, the disfigured and reclusive John Green, better known to the world as Frankie Styne, the author of a series of violent bestsellers. When his latest novel is unexpectedly nominated for a literary prize and his private life is exposed in the glare of publicity, Frankie plots a gruesome, twisted revenge that threatens others who call Onley Street home. Frankie Styne and the Silver Man is unforgettable: a thrilling novel of literary revenge, celebrity culture and the power of love and beauty in an ugly world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771960380
Publisher:	Biblioasis
Publication date:	02/09/2016
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Kathy Page is the author of seven novels, including Alphabet (an Indie Next Great Read of 2014, Kirkus Best Book of 2014, and Shelf Awareness Shelf Discovery Pick), The Story of My Face (longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2002), and The Find (shorlisted for the ReLit Award in 2011), as well as many short stories, previously collected in As In Music. She recently co-edited In the Flesh (2012), a collection of personal essays about the human body, and has written for television and radio. Her 1992 novel Frankie Styne & the Silver Man will make its American debut as a Biblioasis ReSet Book in the fall of 2015. Born in the UK, Kathy has lived on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia since 2001.

Editorial Reviews

11/30/2015
In this early novel from Page (Alphabet), first published in the U.K. in 1992, Frankie Styne—a pseudonym taken from the mangled version of Frankenstein that children taunted him with in the schoolyard—is a disfigured author of violent bestselling novels. After his publisher unexpectedly nominates one of his books for a literary prize, the introverted Frank is overwhelmed, viewing it as a petrifying “process of change” that will expose him to the world. Like Frank’s fiction, this book has the trappings of great pulp, as Frank hatches a grotesque plot against his agent: “What could you do to revenge yourself on... someone who could dictate a gush of words that would leave someone else—him—reeling?” Paralleling Frank’s own circumstances, Page’s novel plays with this concept of high literature versus pulp fiction conceits by contrasting Frank with Liz, a young mother with a beautiful but nearly brain-dead baby (the Silver Man). Practically more Liz’s story than Frank’s, Page’s novel never quite pays off. It is unbalanced in execution, its ending both weirdly abrupt and unearned. This imbalance isn’t fatal; Page’s prose is vivid and alive, with nary a scrap of throwaway writing to be found. Yet the ultimate success of the novel lies in its individual moments, not in its whole. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Frankie Styne and the Silver Man

“Exquisite …[Page’s] favored themes are here—the stark dichotomies of life, the power of language, the way the social system tries and fails to help people, and how saving grace can come from unseen places … A fierce writer; her relentless imagination and pure writing skills bring a broken, nightmare world fully to life.”—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

"Page draws on ... pulp material – monsters; aliens; an unhappy, childless marriage – and takes her characters to equally dark places. What’s different is [that] Page’s monsters display a more complex relationship between inner and outer ugliness and find redemption in responsibility."—The Globe & Mail

“Frankie Styne offers a terrific showcase of Page’s singular style (with its attractive high-low mixture of genres), quirky unexpected invention, and attention to the nuances of psychology. Mere words on a page, her creations linger in the mind long after the reading’s done.”—Vancouver Sun

“Frankie Styne and the Silver Man is a fantastic novel. Character driven, claustrophobic, and deeply weird, it has a haunting, discomfiting quality that lingers with a reader."—Toronto Star

“[Kathy Page’s] writing is beautifully crafted … pulling her readers into her world. Her astute attention to detail makes for good reading.”—The Winnipeg Free Press

“Strange and deeply haunting ... Page’s prose is cold, crystalline terror ... Frankie Styne and the Silver Man seems unknowable at first, until it builds to a thankfully redemptive climax.”—National Post

"This book has the trappings of great pulp...Page’s prose is vivid and alive, with nary a scrap of throwaway writing to be found."—Publishers Weekly

"An amazing and unique read from beginning to end, Frankie Styne & the Silver Man is a deftly crafted work of truly memorable literary fiction that is especially recommended for community and academic library Contemporary Fiction collections."—Midwest Book Review

“Page’s imaginative powers are electric. She has the ability to analyze the often nightmarish qualities of the human psyche and as a result, Frankie Styne is a taut examination of the complex emotional ties that bind, the methods we employ to distance ourselves, and our ambiguous powers of imagination. She is at once poignant and provocative, stomach-churningly distasteful and yet compulsively readable.”—Time Out UK

“Frankie Styne and the Silver Man resists being put down for the night… I read on, captivated and creeped-out. But this being Kathy Page, I always trusted I was heading away from a nightmare, towards a happier place. This is Felicia’s Journey, with a big dollop of hope.”—Caroline Adderson, prize-winning author of Ellen in Pieces

"This is the very best book that I’ve read in ages, and if I read another half as good in the next few months, that will constitute an extraordinary literary year."—Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This

“Fresh and engaging. Her writing is crisp and her insights into human behavior are acute.”—Lynne Van Luven, Monday Magazine

“Great story. Great writing, too. [Frankie Styne renders] down the monstrous, gently fold the abnormal into an embrace and make it human ... Fantastic!”—Helen Heffernan

From the Publisher

★ 2015-09-03
A pulp-fiction writer, an unwed mother, and a couple with marital problems live as neighbors in connected town houses and correct course in their contiguous lives. Page (Alphabet, 2014, etc.) builds layers of meaning into her exquisite writing. Her favored themes are here—the stark dichotomies of life, the power of language, the way the social system tries and fails to help people, and how saving grace can come from unseen places. Page sets a theatrical stage of three connected homes, with young unwed mother Liz Meredith living in the middle under the watchful eye of a social worker, Mrs. Purvis. Liz stays up late at night listening to the arguments, the sex, and the reconciliations of her neighbors Alice and Tom while feeding her newborn son, Jim. On the other side of Liz's house, novelist Frank Styne, disfigured from birth, follows precise routines and writes another book. He is shortlisted for the Hanslett Prize and dreads it, fantasizing a hideous revenge on his agent for the embarrassment of his now-very-public persona. While he writes his pulp, Liz ruminates about her son's silence. Jim has Spinney's syndrome and will never speak. She adores her baby in spite of this hardship and calls him the Silverboy who will one day become a silver man—the silver lining her beloved Grammy talked about. This is a pained and damaged clutch of people living within hearing distance, drawn into each other's lives. "Other lives. It was frightening to think of. Because anything was possible. Really anything," Page writes. The options come quickly at the end, and "anything" does transpire, all because Liz stayed the course, true to herself and to her "silly boy." Page is a fierce writer; her relentless imagination and pure writing skills bring a broken, nightmare world fully to life.

Kirkus Reviews