Tapping the Source [Paperback]

Kem Nunn (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Picador (1999)
• ISBN-10: 0330361724
• ISBN-13: 978-0330361729
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,088,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Noir" in Disguise, July 20, 2000

By 

R. W. Rasband (Heber City, UT) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tapping the Source (Tr, Reissue (Paperback)

Although this takes the form of a novel about surfing, it is actually a great example of latter day noir, with a touch of mysticism and horror, if you will: Isaac Bashevis Singer meets Raymond Chandler meets Jim Thompson. It's a coming-of-age tale where a young guy faces down a nightmarish criminal sub-culture in order to solve a murder, in prose so clear and hypnotic it's like you are actually hearing it from the very lips of the storyteller. Thriller fans (and just plain lovers of literature) shouldn't miss this.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Will keep you up at night..., September 11, 2006

By 

A reader from Nor Cal (Santa Cruz, CA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Tapping the Source (Paperback)

You know you've been somewhat transformed by a story when it's done, and you can't think about anything else for a while. Or start another book.

Ike Tucker is a self-described "hick", a small town kid with very little motivation to escape his circumstances. Then a mysterious stranger shows up one day with information on Ike's sister, Ellen, who left home two years ago and hasn't been heard from since. With little more than a piece of paper with three names on it and a handful of cash, Ike sets out for Huntington Beach, California, to find out what happened to his sister.

Written in limited third person point-of-view, the story is viewed only through Ike's eyes. Yet Nunn does an amazing job of developing the other characters and their arcs. Ike Tucker's journey and transformation is completely engaging, from his introduction into the hard-core surf scene to the moment he becomes a true local. Along the way, Ike loses sight of his goal to the temptations of H.B.'s gritty underworld, and we are sucked in as helplessly as he is. It is only at the end we realize that Ike's derailment is his true path to self-discovery.

Nunn is a master at creating atmosphere. He does an incredible job at rendering setting--the fading buildings, the lost souls, the drugs, and the continual creep of industry encroaching on a California beach town gone to seed.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars readable and re-readable, October 31, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tapping the Source (Mass Market Paperback)

I love this book. No matter how many things I read, when I have run out of fiction, I always pick this up -- I can open it anywhere and instantly be in the shadow of the pier or at the Trax Ranch watching the swell and waiting for my wave, in Morris' shop tearing down a Shovelhead, or at Hound's house as the camera whirrs . . . In this first novel Kem Nunn got his pacing just right, and his amazing use of light and sound to capture atmosphere takes surfing out of the sun and into the shadows of the "dark side of the dream." Ike Tucker could have been created by Fitzgerald to tell of Preston Marsh, like a boat against the current beating ceaselessly into the past, or by Salinger, like Holden Caulfield trying to prevent the inexorable. I loved it.