Description
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.
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
