The King of Limbo: Stories [AUDIOBOOK] (Paperback)

by Adrianne Harun (Author) "NATIFE, PEDALING HARD ON THE BORROWED MOUNTAIN bike, turned onto Old Cross Road and found himself surrounded by a fluttering mass..." (more)
Key Phrases: Salish Bay, Andrew Glenn, Lovell Burdine (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Harun's debut is a disparate collection of delicately crafted, intelligent stories that have gained attention individually, though read together they lack cohesion. The narrator of the title story is a boy named William who has just reluctantly celebrated his sixth birthday in the midst of confusion over his parents' breakup; his dog, Goodwood, found during the spring his parents married, is dying of cancer, and William wants desperately to believe in the wisdom and nobility of the knights in castles he reads about. In the opening story, "Lukudi" (meaning "wealthmagic"), a young Nigerian man, Natife, who appears as William's friend in the title tale, devotes his old world village healing powers to the peer counseling of a disturbed 16-year-old Connecticut girl whom he visits as part of his school's extra credit program. Natife is convinced that "someone was doing juju" on the girl, Ally Reisch, who has "the pink rheumy eyes and frail blondness of an old woman on her way to bone and ash." His gift to her, a lighter given in a joyful impulse, is the instrument of her first and only act of salvation. Harun plays with the reader's expectations, though wisely does not give in to them, best evidenced in a perplexing, brief tale about unexplained human disappearances that won a Story magazine competition, "The Unseen Ear of God." In another gently paced piece, "The Eighth Sleeper of Ephesus" (winner of the Nelson Algren Award), an old man who seems destroyed by the death of his beloved wife takes on a startling, tender new persona in letters he writes to a newspaper. The potential that Harun reveals in this collection is immense, though a more tightly focused collection or a novel might showcase her strengths to better effect.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
A varied, highly interesting debut collection....Unusual and sophisticated work from a gifted newcomer. -- Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

Harun is a witty, sure-handed writer whose work shines with real originality. -- Baltimore Sun

Harun's tales occupy an alluringly dark dimension, one that is both mystical and also eminently recognizable. -- New York Newsday

The stories in Adrianne Harun's debut collection "The King of Limbo" sparkle like expertly cut gems. -- The Denver Post

These uprooted lives read like dreamscapes spun from fierce realities, in prose radiating intelligence, panache, and wild humor. -- O--The Oprah Magazine --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (May 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618257977
• ISBN-13: 978-0618257973
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,481,700 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars STORIES PENNED WITH PRECISION, GRACE AND STYLE, March 4, 2002

By	Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: The King of Limbo and Other Stories (Sewanee Writers' Series) (Hardcover)

This debut collection of short stories bodes well for the author's future and our reading pleasure, as Harun writes with precision, grace, and style. Nonetheless, taken as a whole, these ten tales seem oddly disjointed, vignettes gathered from hither and yon. Individually they are minute works of art, penned with perception and imagination.

"Lukudi," the opening story, features Natife, a Nigerian foreign exchange student and a recurring character in this collection. He is a "tall young man in a silky fuschia tracksuit, a gift from the aunts in Chicago," who is perplexed by the problems besetting 16-year-old Ally Reisch, she of "the pink rheumy eyes and frail blondness of an old woman on her way to bone." He relies upon his native upbringing, concluding that a blood sacrifice is needed, a chicken perhaps.

Miranda, a young woman who "set up housekeeping with one poor excuse after another; all sponges, heels, rats," is the focus of "Accidents." After driving her car into the front of a house she recall the pain she experienced when her baby was born prematurely, a baby who came "all in a rush, like a traveler without luggage or money or memory or desire."

Perhaps the most poignant story is "The Eighth Sleeper Of Ephesus" (winner of the Nelson Algren Award). We meet an older man, Frank Cocokowski who hears the voice of his dead wife, and finds surcease in writing letters to the editor of a newspaper.

Adrianne Harun proves herself a writer to watch.

- Gail Cooke

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An elegant collection of stories, December 9, 2001

By	Gretchen Laskas "Author" (Virginia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The King of Limbo and Other Stories (Sewanee Writers' Series) (Hardcover)

I'm not surprised to see this writer being written about in the big review newspapers such as The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. Adrianne Harun's THE KING OF LIMBO is a sublime collection of stories, haunting and elegant at the same time. Filled with unusual people, the reader can't help but feel a connection with these characters, even in the most unlikely of circumstances.

I suspect we will be seeing great things from this writer for some time to come.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Limbo Limbo Limbo, March 23, 2003

By	"nini633" (Newton, Massachusetts United States) - See all my reviews

Adrianne Harun, author of The King of Limbo is quite possibly royalty herself. Harun is masterful in her craft, and the queen of seeing the world through various perspectives.
In this compilation of ten (20-or-so-paged) short stories, Harun provides deliberate outlooks from vastly contrasted characters and secondary characters. She captures the roles of a Nigerian exchange student and the troubled girl he perceives to be under the grips of an evil juju spell; a woman who has lost a child and the elderly couple whose house she drunkenly plows her car into; and in the title story, a six-year-old boy, his mother, and the same Nigerian exchange student -- only now, he's all grown up. In these brilliantly detailed vignettes, Harun lends her readers a pattern (which is sometimes formulaic, but nonetheless satisfying) of a rich anecdote or situation infused with cryptic feeling descriptions, followed by an explanation of such emotions, and then finished with a drastic -- or at least surprising -- concluding character action.
The best model of such development is in the book's first story, Lukudi. Natife, the aforementioned Nigerian exchange student, is working with a local girl as an extra credit project. He "pedal[s] hard on...[a] borrowed mountain bike..." down the street heading towards the stable at which she lives, to meet with her for the sixth of their peer counseling meetings. Natife is described as, "resplendent...this tall young man in a silky fuschia tracksuit." When meets Ally, the troubled girl that he has taken a friendly liking to, the reader can clearly see the images and events unfolding; but it is only after information of both character's pasts are revealed that the real issues of the story become apparent. The all-too-brief and all-too-painful piece ends with the girl's suicide and the residual morals that wealth does not equal happiness and we must strive to take care of our families and neighbors.
Harun's writing may be full of sensory images and sentiments, but she still leaves much to the reader's imagination. Rather than stating the young girl's fatal choice, Harun illustrates the moment in literary beauty, and through the peripheral and foreign view of Natife. She writes, "[Ally] cleared the fence and disappeared into the night sky, flickering like a star, but it was only when he heard the fire siren, the trucks tearing out down Old Cross Farm, that Natife caught Ally's cry, caught it and held it briefly in his shining bowl. Then he let her fly." The pain of the act is expressed, but in a more worldly manner; one in which most authors do not have the insight to express.
The stories are more juxtaposed with some common themes rather than woven together. There is the one recurring main character, and a few side characters whose names are repeated throughout the various stories. Most importantly, though, is the setting of Salish Bay, a place one character in The Eighth Sleeper of Ephesus (a slowly paced, magical story -- my favorite in the anthology) describes simply as, "God's country." The phantom northwest town is the home of hospitality and brotherhood, a place that advances with time but still stays true to its time-honored values. The heavenly town works as the setting for many of the dissimilar characters to recall what really matters in life. And with Harun's mastery of diverse subject matter, we can imagine that she has some idea as to what that may be.
Often while reading, I am enticed to create a relationship with a character based on personal similarities. But Adrianne Harun invites her readers to remember that reading is meant to be an adventure, that it is supposed to show us the unexplored. Her craftfulness over a group of zany and new protagonists encourage the reader to look beyond themselves and become more open-minded. This book has just limboed its way into my favorites collection.