Rabid: A Novel [Hardcover]

T K Kenyon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2007

In a thrilling novel with clever twists and turns, four characters—a graduate student, her professor, his wife, and her priest—spin out of control in a world where science and religion are in constant conflict. A priest of the modern Roman Inquisition arrives in a New England college town to investigate allegations of child abuse by the local parish priests who have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. The priest, a famous scientist in his own right, is immediately drawn into the private hell—and bed—of a pretty parishioner who confesses that she wants to kill her husband because of his infidelity. The husband, a prominent yet self-absorbed professor, is relentlessly driven by his mad quest to win the Nobel Prize and by his brazen and reckless lust for his students. When one of them falls ill with a mysterious neurological disorder, no one knows how bad things really are—until the subject of the professor’s secret research is revealed and crescendos in a brilliantly depicted battle between faith and science.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* A priest, a professor, the professor's wife, and his mistress--it sounds like the setup for a dirty joke, but debut novelist Kenyon isn't fooling around. What begins as a riff on Peyton Place (salacious small-town intrigue) smoothly metamorphoses into a philosophical battle between science and religion. You would think that in attempting to deal with so many different themes--shady clergy, top-secret scientific research, marital infidelity, lust, love, honor, faith--Kenyon would run the risk of overwhelming readers. But, and this is why Kenyon is definitely an author to watch, she juggles all of her story's elements without dropping any of them--and, let's not forget, creates four very subtle and intriguing central characters. This is a novel quite unlike most standard commercial fare, a genre-bending story--part thriller, part literary slapdown with dialogue as the weapon of choice (think Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)--that makes us laugh, wince, and reflect all at the same time. Kenyon is definitely a keeper. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"A solid good read by a gifted writer."  —Thom Jones, author, O. Henry Award winner and National Book Award finalist

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Kunati Inc. (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1601640021
• ISBN-13: 978-1601640024
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #756,614 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

TK Kenyon is an Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate, novelist, award-winning short story writer, pharmaceutical industry regulatory consultant, technical writer, molecular virologist, neuroscientist, minivan-driving mom, happy wife, cat slave, P90X devotee, surfer, high-handicap golfer, scuba diver, gourmet chef, mostly vegetarian, chocolatier, gardener, capsaicin addict, caffeine junkie, Apache and Scot descendant, native Arizonan, Connectikite, unapologetic Oxfordian, nouveau feminist, political moderate with extremist tendencies, radical atheist, Buddhist-curious, occasional UU, Tamil Ayer Brahmin Hindu by marriage, ex-actress, grown-up child beauty queen, PhD, MFA, BS (in so many ways), ASU Sun Devil, Iowa Hawkeye, UPenn Quaker, and always looking for something interesting to do.

Dr. Kenyon's Daily Writing Apple is a daily writing prompt to help you with your fiction work-in progress, instead of an unrelated writing exercise in creative futility that asks you to write about an elephant or how some other character feels. Subscribe via Atom Posts at http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com or Like on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dr-Kenyons-Daily-Writing-Apple.

Twitter: @TKKenyon.

If you found a mistake or typo in an ebook, you may be a winner! Please email the author at the link provided at the end of the ebook and describe the typo and where it is (anything: a percent through the book, the sentence with the typo and chapter, chapter and paragraph number, etc.) The first person to report each typo or mistake will receive a free ebook for the e-reader of their choice.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Robin Cook on Steroids, April 4, 2007

By 

Art Tirrell - "The Vitaman Effect" (upstate ny) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rabid: A Novel (Hardcover)

Rabid is one of those reads that hit the ground at full speed and pick up momentum from there. Either T.K. Kenyon doesn't know where the brake pedal is or decided the hell with it, and frankly, I'd bet it was the latter. This is a full blown, balls-to-the-wall scorcher. Dual themes - out-of-control scientific research and[...]- make hot-as-the-devil premises and great platforms for the author's fascinating and often thought-provoking philosophical tirades. Whether science or religion, Rabid gives no quarter. These people are flawed, even hateful. Yet, you feel their pain, their doubt, their fear. They sear their way into your subconscious and in the end you love them and root for them because they are you. If the American priesthood is infested with [...], the underlying causes have never been explained better, made more exciting, or presented in a way that offers so much hope for the future. Get yourself a copy, strap yourself into your favorite chair, and find out what's really been going on in the places you never knew you'd need to start worrying about.

Also recommended: 'Bang BANG' by Lynn Hoffman, an inspiring read.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly readable yet surprisingly deep, December 6, 2007

By 

D. Dorset (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rabid: A Novel (Hardcover)

I bought this book on a recommendation from a well-read friend, and after recently reading "Special Topics in Calamity Physics," "Saturday," and "Never Let Me Go," this book was exactly what I needed. At first blush, with its delightfully raunchy characters and turbo-charged pace, "Rabid" seems like a here-today, forgotten-tomorrow mass-market thriller you'd pick up in the front of an airport bookstore. However, this intelligent book has some intriguing, unusual themes stuck inside its highly digestible prose. The dialogue is, in my opinion, some of the best I've seen in any novel. The conversations amongst the characters are illuminating and entertaining without being unrealistic. Furthermore, as someone who has degrees in Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering, I relished Kenyon's many references to laboratory culture.

Kenyon does an impressive job of juggling the four intertwined characters, and I was happy with three of the four endings. One of the character's endings just seemed abrupt and unfinished based on everything that had happened, but this didn't make me enjoy the book any less. This is an amazing and inspiring first effort. Kenyon skillfully teeters on the edge of absurdity with several of the elements in her plot; one almost expects her to take this plunge that many first-time novelists would indulge in, but she keeps the story firmly on the rails despite navigating amongst disparate settings.

If you're weary of a lot of the overwrought and unnecessarily obscure fiction that's been on the market lately and want a read that is unashamedly enjoyable yet thought-provoking, you won't go wrong picking up "Rabid."

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Crucible of Themes and Characters, April 19, 2007

By 

Veronica Sagan, MD "(No relation)" (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rabid: A Novel (Hardcover)

I love finding a new, brilliant, genius writer. Where has TK Kenyon been hiding? This is her first novel, but it's brilliant. I'm a physician, and two of the characters in this book are MDs, and Kenyon hits the notes about being a doctor perfectly. The science, and there is a scientific metaphor that runs through the book, is true. The stuff that happens in a lab is spot on. To summarize, Dante, a gorgeous Italian Jesuit priest, arrives to investigate claims of pedophilia by another priest and to counsel the victims. Bev discovers that her husband, Conroy, is having an affair and drags him to counseling with Dante. Conroy is having an affair with Leila, his student, and Kenyon gets the tone of the university lab just right. Dante tries to counsel them, but Conroy doesn't want counseling, and the four characters spin out of control. One of the characters kills one of the others about a third of the way through the book, and then the book gets more complicated and scary and involved and crazy and fantastic. There are also parts that made me laugh so hard I had to put the book down. The dialogue, especially in the lab and during the trial, is so damn funny. When I started reading it, there were such strong, separate plot threads and round, perfect, thinking, smart characters, each with their own agenda, that I thought there was no way to adhere to E.M. Forrester's advice, "Only connect." By a third of the way through, I knew this was something really special, as the plot threads braided together and the characters struggled against each other and themselves. The end, with a trial, an exorcism, and a confrontation, is too shocking to ruin for you. I cried at the end. It was so sad and beautiful at the same time, and yet perfect. Any other end would have been wrong.