Customer Reviews

Sister North: A Novel

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I picked up this book merely because I loved the cover art (the nun figurine sitting on a windowsill, with "Go Sister" as its label). There have been very few books that have made me laugh out loud like I did through the first few chapters. A good humorist is a great find, indeed! While the tone becomes more somber after the "incident", there is a dark humor that is addictive, all while telling the tale about one man's search for his place in the world. The intriguing mystery of Sister North kept me reading because I just HAD to know where she was. A very pleasant, well-written book and one of the best I've read in the past year.

Sister North is an excellent book. I picked it up after really enjoying Kokoris' first book, The Rich Part of Life. Sister North has some great characters with superb dialogue and a story that will hold your attention and keep you laughing. Kokoris is one of my favorite new writers. I can't wait to see what he has in store for his third book.

Sam is an attorney on the skids. He's living in a hotel room and running his business out of a strip mall office - when he bothers to go in at all. His perky young secretary tries to keep him in shape but its an uphill battle. But Sam's life gets worse than he ever imagined it could when his secretary is killed in the line of fire when someone comes to the office with a grudge against HIM.

He retreats in despair to his hotel room where the only thing to capture his attention is a television program featuring Sister North - a kindly nun who gives advice to people who call in. He tries to call but doesn't get through so he finally decides to go to Wisconsin to find Sister North in person.

Along the way, he meets Willie who rides along with him. When they get to the town, they find Sister North is gone on one of her trips and its not known when she will be back. And the rumor starts that maybe there really isn't a Sister North. That its all a campaign to bring money to the little town that she's supposedly a part of. Is that true and are all his efforts to find out the reasons for the things that have happened to him for nothing or will Sister North really come back home?

Filled with delightful people, this one is a treat!

Jim Kokoris's debut novel "The Rich Part of Life" is an all time gem of a book, and if you have not read it you should. That said it is always with a sense of trepidation that I approach the sophomore effort of an author when the debut is so beloved. Is it possible to live up to the reader's expectations when the first book was such a delightful reading experience? Jim Kokoris certainly has a way with quirky characters, sort of a less outrageous John Irving. Sister North is no exception to this and is peppered with lovable oddballs. Sam is a shallow, disillusioned Chicago lawyer who's life has taken an unexpected turn for the worse. He heads out on a road trip of sorts to track down Sister North, a wise talking nun whose calm, clear advise is dispensed on the airwaves. Once Sam arrives in the small town that the Sister calls home, his life becomes intertwined with an unusual cast of characters. Does Sam find fulfillment and hope in this most unlikely of places? Perhaps. Did this reader love this effort as much as The Rich Part of Life?", sadly, no. A good second effort, and highly readable, but the sophomore curse seems firmly in place.

I loved reading this book for its well paced, subtle humor and simple, true theme. There seems to be a rash of books dealing with some of the key questions about life these days and I happen to agree with the conclusions in this one. If you thought "The 5 people you meet in Heaven" has the right take on life you may not appreciate the message this book is delivering but it would be worth you reading anyway, if only for the quirky, clever writing! One of my favorites this year...

sam's trip from chicago to wisconsin is desperate search for personal answers and perhaps forgiveness of his many faults from the tv guru, sister north. he meets several pepople with the the same determination, and finds he is not alone in his search for some kind of meaning to his life.the characters are funny in many ways, and their foibles are thought provoking, as well as amusing. Although not an any way he expected, sam does receive the looked for advice from sister north, and the story ends on a very helpful note for most of the seekers.

This book is chock full of interesting characters....hilarious, pathetic, and inspirational. It kept me hooked. Even in the midst of this odd story there is much truth. I don't remember how I happened upon this book but I'm very glad I did!

I was interested in most of the characters, and wanted to find
out what would happen to them. The only character that seemed a
bit annoying to me was "Patrick," and I have a feeling that he
was meant to be at least somewhat annoying. The major thing that
caused me to give this book three stars instead of four, was the
fact that I was rather diappointed with the ending. I was very
disappointed with how the character of Sister North was handled
at the end. It was not what I would have expected, and was
omething of a let-down for me. Even given that, though, I'd have
to say that overall I did enjoy this book.

I first became a fan of Jim Korkoris after reading his terrific novel, The Pursuit of Other Interests: A Novel. This book showcases all the same talents -- a highly readable writing style, well-developed characters, an engaging plot with enough dramatic twists to make you want to keep reading, and a light comic touch mixed with enough drama to make the goings-on in his books seem like slices of real life.

While "Pursuit ... " offered a great snapshot of all the challenges faced by someone who's lost their job, this book explores a more unique situation. A pretty boy lawyer, Sam, is bored with his small-time practice. He had a taste of the big time after marrying an overweight woman just because she was rich and the marriage enabled him to work for his father-in-law in a powerhouse law firm. After she lost weight and got her life together, though, she dropped him, and now he's struggling to keep a small practice afloat. His life gets complicated when a crazed husband who just lost a custody battle wants to take his anger out on all the lawyers who worked for his ex-wife. He shows up at Sam's office with a gun and kills Sam's secretary and then himself, and Sam escapes unscathed.

Wracked with survivor's guilt, Sam's only solace is watching a TV show hosted by a nun, who takes calls, offering hope to the hopeless. Sam decides to travel to the small lake town in Wisconsin where the nun lives, hoping for a chance to meet her.

But the nun is mysteriously absent when he arrives, and that becomes one of the book's 2 minor problems. The books takes on a Waiting for Godot feel, and it gets a little frustrating as you, the reader, must wait, as all the people who show up in town hoping to see her, must wait too, and decipher all the rumors that make you suspect she may never arrive or that she may even be dead. The nun, then becomes less important, as the story focuses on the relationship that develops between all the nun's fans -- burn victims, cancer patients, parents of missing children -- and the town's rsidents, who are milking the nun's popularity for everything they can get, charging ridiculous rates for hotels and selling T-shirts and bric-a-brac with her likeness on it.

The cast of characters are more than a bit quirky -- the hotelier who's overweight, wear muumuus and pines for his dead kitten, the former general who's hoping for insight on his lost son, and who inserts himself into conversations and likes to talk about bizarrely inappropriate topics (why he likes porn) at any time and in any company. En route to Wisconsin, Sam also hooks up with a hitchiker who it seems may try to steal his car, but then lingers in the town and pursues his goal of becoming a magician. They all teeter on the edge of being a little too adorable, but Korkoris gives them enough complexity and a potent combination of noble and selfish traits to make each of them believable and interesting.

The other main problem is that Sam develops a love interest with a woman (Meg, the nun's personal assistant) who hardly ever talks. She has her own mysterious past, which doesn't unravel until the very end. She barely speaks to anyone and her only interest is in running. (She would have competed in the Olympics if she hadn't tripped in a trial run.) It's hard to develop a rooting interest in their romantic attachment when all she and Sam do is run together. They both work on the restoration of the nun's house after a devastating storm, but most of the time she avoids Sam and when she does interact with him, it is only to convey necessary information, in the briefest of exchanges.

Still, Korkoris does mine her inarticulateness for some comic effect -- she hosts a Beatles night at the restaurant where she works and everyone hangs out, but in her role as DJ for the evening all she does between songs is introduce the title of the next one. Patrick, the socially clumsy general who vocalizes the awkward issues everyone else has the commonsense to keep quiet about, observes that it's not much of a show. And anytime Meg's on stage, it isn't.

In the final quarter of the book, though, everything starts to come together, and the lessons the book offers about how to fashion a reasonably content life for yourself after a devastating tragedy are compelling and make for both an entertaining and enlightening read.

This is the second Jim Kokoris book I have read and it didn't disappoint me. Once again as in, 'The Rich Part of Life' Kokoris focuses on people. He provides a window into our very selves. This book is full of real life characters who challenge our notions of good, bad, selfish and generous. A variety of characters are each seeking to find meaning in their fractured lives through the messianic nun Sister North and how they eventually discover it for themselves.
It should also be said that Kokoris's books have both fun and humour in them and are a joy to read.
If there is any criticism it is that this book tends to be 'light weight' in comparison to 'The Rich Part of Life' but having said that it should not discourage a reading of it. A bonus is that one may just end up on a voyage of self discovery.