Tapping the Source [Paperback]

Kem Nunn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 30, 2005

People go to Huntington Beach in search of the endless parties, the ultimate highs and the perfect waves. Ike Tucker has come to look for his missing sister and for the three men who may have murdered her. In that place of gilded surfers and sun-bleached blondes, Ike's search takes him on a journey through a twisted world of crazed Vietnam vets, sadistic surfers, drug dealers, and mysterious seducers. Ike looks into the shadows and finds parties that drift towards pointless violence, joyless vacations and highs you might never come down from ... and a sea of old hatreds and dreams gone bad. And if he's not careful, his is a journey from which he will never return.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you aren't already familiar with Kem Nunn's 1984 novel Tapping the Source, or if the idea of a "classic surfing novel" makes you either chuckle or shudder, be prepared to realign your literary biases. This is not a story of gilded surfers and sun-bleached blonds, of insouciant days and moonlit nights on the beach; instead, Nunn has crafted a darkly pensive meditation on solitude and desire. Ike Tucker is the quintessential loner, trapped by both circumstance and inclination in a California desert town, abandoned first by his mother and then by his sister, Ellen, who fled, in turn, toward the promise of the coast. His awareness of his own alienation, rendered in prose that is always elegant and often poignant, is haunting:

As he listened the train sounds grew faint and disappeared and someone shut off the music so there was just the silence, that special kind of silence that comes to the desert, and he knew that if he waited there would come a time, stars fading, slim band of light creeping on the horizon, when the silence would grow until it was unbearable, until it was as if the land itself were about to break it, to give up some secret of its own.

The secret, though, comes not from the desert but from the sea. Propelled by a mysterious rumor of his sister's murder, Ike enters the surfing mecca of Huntington Beach, whose bright façade conceals shadowy violence and joyless violation. Wistfully intent on understanding the men who might have killed his sister, Ike abandons himself to the hypnotic allure of the ocean: "The tide was low and the waves turned crisp black faces toward the shore while trails of mist rose from their feathering lips in the golden sun." Nunn's language effortlessly reflects Ike's desires and fears; the novel spirals gracefully into the young man's eventual immersion in the surfing culture and riffs on the terrifying ease with which that immersion becomes overwhelming. Although a murder may lie at the heart of the narrative, the novel is far more an exploration of character than of suspect and motive--and that exploration is infinitely rewarding. --Kelly Flynn --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Kem Nunn spent his youth in Southern California surfing and working on boats and did not go to college to study the writer's craft until he was nearly 30. Kem Nunn now lives in Northern California, has contributed articles to Surfer Magazine, and added university work and screenwriting to his list of occupations alongside his fiction.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press; 3rd edition (December 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156025808X
• ISBN-13: 978-1560258087
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #234,472 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.

8 of 8 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

Amazon Verified Purchase

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.