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Follow Me Down by Kio Stark
It begins with an envelope. Twenty years old, maybe more, with the dust of the dead-letter office still clinging to the stained, fraying paper. It arrives in the mailbox of Lucy with the address of a vacant neighborhood lot barely legible on the front. Inside she finds only a photograph of a man she does not recognize, but whose face captivates her instantly. She hunts for him, feeling for blind answers in the boroughs of her soul and city. The details of her world, of a neighborhood decaying and maimed in daylight, yet pulsing with some hidden life in dark; the shaded, shifting menace of shadow on the night sidewalk, blur together through the fogged lens of her favorite plastic camera, and the casual banter of summer afternoons evaporates into the hiss of something missing, leading Lucy across the darkened city, from the canal slicing through her neighborhood over the rivers at the city limits, its mystery resolving into vivid, caustic focus in the book's concluding scenes. Follow Me Down owns moments both wondrous in their sympathy and wild in their desolation, as Stark culls from the crumbling city setting characters mercurial and impassable, joyous and redemptive.
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First published June 7, 2011
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About the author
Kio Stark
4 books149 followersI'm a writer, teacher, researcher, and passionate activist for independent learning. I currently coordinate the Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Learning initiative. I also write fiction, my first novel is Follow Me Down (2011).
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
November 21, 2013
If you have ever started reading a book on an airplane, and upon landing have sat yourself back with the huddled masses of air travelers to finish the book before getting back to your real life, then you'll understand that this just happened to me with this novel.
Stark's protagonist, the traffic-stoppingly beautiful Lucy has a name that doesn't fit her and a life that is wearing thin in crucial patches. What is she running from? How can she be so good at finding all the mistakes others make but keeps missing her own cues? And what the fuck is up with the post office delivering her mis-addressed mail from 20 years ago?
Yeah, you need to read this.
Stark's protagonist, the traffic-stoppingly beautiful Lucy has a name that doesn't fit her and a life that is wearing thin in crucial patches. What is she running from? How can she be so good at finding all the mistakes others make but keeps missing her own cues? And what the fuck is up with the post office delivering her mis-addressed mail from 20 years ago?
Yeah, you need to read this.
December 14, 2011
This novel is definitely a type, an exploration of city streets by an interested, artistic outsider. I think, honestly, we used to call it a Lower East Side novel, but that gentrification has complicated that marker. But here, we have a very attractive redhead who is, in some senses, chasing her brother who has disappeared, not in a dramatic way but more than anything metaphorically, into drug abuse, and she is now living his life, hoping for a trace. This motivates the main plot, tracking down the man in a photograph that is mistakenly delivered to her…. What follows is a bit more of a genre pastiche—Stark writes a semi-traditional PI narrative in terms of first identifying, and then locating the man in the picture, which necessarily is a judgmental kind of fiction, introducing suspicion into the lapsarian ghetto environment—and suddenly there are bad guys. I suppose the overall arc is a little like Heart of Darkness, since when she finds the guy he doesn’t really provide answers—if Marlowe also traveled with someone who wanted to kill him or at least stop him from finding Marlowe.
Usually the redemptive features of the Lower East Side novel are the writing, which can be lyrical and intense but always default back to saying, “that’s what I saw.” The writing here is elevated, but never fully to that lyric pitch, at least to me- it’s a little too fussy and self-aware for that. It’s an interesting book, and I like parts of it- the mystery is twisty, and I feel the emptiness that drives the narrator—though I don’t think in the end that it completely works.
Usually the redemptive features of the Lower East Side novel are the writing, which can be lyrical and intense but always default back to saying, “that’s what I saw.” The writing here is elevated, but never fully to that lyric pitch, at least to me- it’s a little too fussy and self-aware for that. It’s an interesting book, and I like parts of it- the mystery is twisty, and I feel the emptiness that drives the narrator—though I don’t think in the end that it completely works.
June 22, 2011
Follow Me Down contains a bit of a mystery surrounding a misdirected "dead letter" that arrives in a young woman's NYC (probably Brooklyn from the sounds of things) mailbox some 30 years after the fact. But it is not, in point of fact, a mystery story. Instead, it's an interesting bit of fiction in which the author's ability to describe the finely-honed awareness of people and place that women in particular (especially young attractive women) who live in urban areas develop about their surroundings and the regulars with whom they coexist (if not interact) on a regular basis. Likewise, it's more of a novella--weighing in at only 110 pages--than a novel. As Lucy tries to run to ground the story of the former occupant of a twice-burned house on a vacant inner city lot, she very nearly mirrors the fleeing shady characters herself in so far as she permits herself few personal attachments and has clearly fled a previous life and perhaps only assumed the one the reader meets her in within the space of a few years. Truly though, the story is incidental to Stark's ability to describe urban people, spaces, and the many unspoken proxemic and verbal dances we perform when making and/or giving people space in urban settings. This is Stark's first novel, and I will certainly keep an eye out for her subsequent work.
June 21, 2011
Kio Stark writes with intimacy and familiarity about this haunting and stark urban landscape. It reads like a dream -- atmospheric and impressionistic. The story is simple...a twenty year old letter arrives at Lucy's address, and she becomes obsessed with learning the story behind the photo. We follow her in her journey for a truth that has nothing to do with her, or possibly everything to do with her. Lucy, the protagonist, keeps people (including the reader) at a distance. The result is that her quest and longing become even more palpable and, ultimately, heart-breaking. I was just the tiniest bit disappointed with the ending, though I believe it has the desired effect. The images of this book will stay with me...and I will be curious to see what Stark does next.
August 10, 2011
[Originally published at The Nervous Breakdown.]
“Sometimes what you want is to be somewhere you do not belong.”
Kio Stark’s lyrical Follow Me Down (Red Lemonade) is a densely packed novella that wanders the projects of New York City capturing the lives of the people that live there in glorious detail—photographs melting into still life paintings, fingers smudged from handling wet paint that should have been left to dry. Sometimes you get a little dirty when you dig, and sometimes people need to disappear. Our protagonist, Lucy is unwilling and unable to turn her back on a mysterious letter that has been freed from the dead-letter office by unknown forces—a picture inside lost for twenty years, the echo of her long lost brother murmuring in the empty corners of her apartment. We follow Lucy as she tries to get to the bottom of this mystery. She sees the world for all that it is: dangerous and heartbreaking and kind. The characters of her gritty neighborhood streets—the people she sees on the subway as she commutes to her dull job in an office high up in the metal skyscrapers—they are her muse. These people embody her every waking hope and fear. They are her touchstone and lodestone—her dysfunctional adopted family.
Early on in this story we get a sense of Lucy’s mental state, her unique point of view, and her sense of wanderlust and fractured personal history, running from secrets and pain:
“There was a knock at the door and I didn’t answer. The same knock, over so many years. The same man on the far side of the door, looking for redemption we both know won’t hold. When his footsteps faded, I packed a bag and boarded a bus. Disappearing was easier than I thought it would be.”
These opening lines set the tone for the words that follow, a heavy setting filled with emotional turmoil—a balance of numb loss and childlike wonder at the beauty that still exists around her. More of her past leaks out a few pages later, shedding some light on the darkness that shadows our heroine:
“I had a brother once. The last time he knocked on my door, I didn’t answer. He had been the light in my eyes, an earnest and unprotected boy, foolish and charming. I lost him to the city. The last time he knocked on my door was the day I left him behind.”
As we explore the world around Lucy, the misfits and delinquents around her—a mix of jealous girls, predatory suitors, and protective thugs—she captures these moments in lush, vivid details that reveal the eccentricities and mental instability of everyone she encounters:
“On a crowded corner there’s a young man with tight shoulders and clipped hair. Tourists surround him but he doesn’t see them, he’s staring out across the street into the far distance of his imagination. His hands are moving in a pattern that repeats, it seems for a moment like the signs of the cross: Father, Son, Holy Ghost. But it’s not, the motions are more intricate and subtle. He flicks two fingers at his chin, and suddenly I see that his fingers are talking, it’s sign language, and by the long stare it is clear that his hands are talking to himself. He says the same thing over and over until at last the light changes and his hands drop to his sides, his fingers still moving like pistons, muttering at the sidewalk.”
On her subway rides the fellow commuters are exposed, her eye drawn to anything that doesn’t blend into the metal and glass:
“The train is tense again this morning. There’s a man sitting near the doors. He is handsome and his clothes smell like money, but something is wrong. His eyes are stunned wide open, he never blinks. He has a slight smile that hints at severed neural pathways, inert violence. He wears a woolen hat on a warm morning. He speaks to the backs of the Japanese girls standing near him, ‘You’re not listening,’ he says, over and over, varying his inflection a little with each repetition.”
Lucy is hesitant to get too close to her lover, Jimmy. She keeps the secret of the photograph, and her amateur sleuthing, hidden from her girlfriend, Natalie. In many ways she is alone—a ghost haunting the lives of those who embrace her, never able to sit still and settle down, afraid to push her roots into the soil. She allows the locals to look out for her and at the same time, is fearful of them: “All I can think of when men offer to carry things for me is: and then what would I owe you.” So Lucy keeps her walls up and shields herself from the growing paranoia, caging her heart in metal and twine. As she digs deeper and asks uncomfortable questions, she continues to track the man in the photograph, stirring up trouble and bringing unwanted attention to herself—the streets closing in around her.
When Lucy finally gets her answers, solves the problem at hand, she realizes that she has been kidding herself, buried so deeply in her own denial that she has lost track of her own truths and realities. She has violated those around her, abandoned her own flesh and blood, and it is more than she can handle. The city she has loved has now turned against her—she only has once choice left.
Kio Stark weaves a poetic tapestry of the streets of New York City. By the time Lucy has ended her story in this slim volume of dense prose, we are part of that neighborhood, a history has been created for us and we mourn her losses as our own. This novella is not only a fascinating character study but also an immersive journey into the center of what it means to be alive—and the eternal chances we are given to reinvent ourselves and be reborn.
“Sometimes what you want is to be somewhere you do not belong.”
Kio Stark’s lyrical Follow Me Down (Red Lemonade) is a densely packed novella that wanders the projects of New York City capturing the lives of the people that live there in glorious detail—photographs melting into still life paintings, fingers smudged from handling wet paint that should have been left to dry. Sometimes you get a little dirty when you dig, and sometimes people need to disappear. Our protagonist, Lucy is unwilling and unable to turn her back on a mysterious letter that has been freed from the dead-letter office by unknown forces—a picture inside lost for twenty years, the echo of her long lost brother murmuring in the empty corners of her apartment. We follow Lucy as she tries to get to the bottom of this mystery. She sees the world for all that it is: dangerous and heartbreaking and kind. The characters of her gritty neighborhood streets—the people she sees on the subway as she commutes to her dull job in an office high up in the metal skyscrapers—they are her muse. These people embody her every waking hope and fear. They are her touchstone and lodestone—her dysfunctional adopted family.
Early on in this story we get a sense of Lucy’s mental state, her unique point of view, and her sense of wanderlust and fractured personal history, running from secrets and pain:
“There was a knock at the door and I didn’t answer. The same knock, over so many years. The same man on the far side of the door, looking for redemption we both know won’t hold. When his footsteps faded, I packed a bag and boarded a bus. Disappearing was easier than I thought it would be.”
These opening lines set the tone for the words that follow, a heavy setting filled with emotional turmoil—a balance of numb loss and childlike wonder at the beauty that still exists around her. More of her past leaks out a few pages later, shedding some light on the darkness that shadows our heroine:
“I had a brother once. The last time he knocked on my door, I didn’t answer. He had been the light in my eyes, an earnest and unprotected boy, foolish and charming. I lost him to the city. The last time he knocked on my door was the day I left him behind.”
As we explore the world around Lucy, the misfits and delinquents around her—a mix of jealous girls, predatory suitors, and protective thugs—she captures these moments in lush, vivid details that reveal the eccentricities and mental instability of everyone she encounters:
“On a crowded corner there’s a young man with tight shoulders and clipped hair. Tourists surround him but he doesn’t see them, he’s staring out across the street into the far distance of his imagination. His hands are moving in a pattern that repeats, it seems for a moment like the signs of the cross: Father, Son, Holy Ghost. But it’s not, the motions are more intricate and subtle. He flicks two fingers at his chin, and suddenly I see that his fingers are talking, it’s sign language, and by the long stare it is clear that his hands are talking to himself. He says the same thing over and over until at last the light changes and his hands drop to his sides, his fingers still moving like pistons, muttering at the sidewalk.”
On her subway rides the fellow commuters are exposed, her eye drawn to anything that doesn’t blend into the metal and glass:
“The train is tense again this morning. There’s a man sitting near the doors. He is handsome and his clothes smell like money, but something is wrong. His eyes are stunned wide open, he never blinks. He has a slight smile that hints at severed neural pathways, inert violence. He wears a woolen hat on a warm morning. He speaks to the backs of the Japanese girls standing near him, ‘You’re not listening,’ he says, over and over, varying his inflection a little with each repetition.”
Lucy is hesitant to get too close to her lover, Jimmy. She keeps the secret of the photograph, and her amateur sleuthing, hidden from her girlfriend, Natalie. In many ways she is alone—a ghost haunting the lives of those who embrace her, never able to sit still and settle down, afraid to push her roots into the soil. She allows the locals to look out for her and at the same time, is fearful of them: “All I can think of when men offer to carry things for me is: and then what would I owe you.” So Lucy keeps her walls up and shields herself from the growing paranoia, caging her heart in metal and twine. As she digs deeper and asks uncomfortable questions, she continues to track the man in the photograph, stirring up trouble and bringing unwanted attention to herself—the streets closing in around her.
When Lucy finally gets her answers, solves the problem at hand, she realizes that she has been kidding herself, buried so deeply in her own denial that she has lost track of her own truths and realities. She has violated those around her, abandoned her own flesh and blood, and it is more than she can handle. The city she has loved has now turned against her—she only has once choice left.
Kio Stark weaves a poetic tapestry of the streets of New York City. By the time Lucy has ended her story in this slim volume of dense prose, we are part of that neighborhood, a history has been created for us and we mourn her losses as our own. This novella is not only a fascinating character study but also an immersive journey into the center of what it means to be alive—and the eternal chances we are given to reinvent ourselves and be reborn.
July 23, 2011
Kio Stark’s Follow Me Down, is one of those, “little-big” books that I love finding, and another one that I've read recently published by Red Lemonade. This book contains exquisite storytelling, beautiful writing, snapshots of images that are bits of a larger picture, very precise, an honest-to-goodness book—a human document that is unique. I love this book for what it is and I have dog-eared many favorite pages, underlining passages that resonate with Stark’s crisp vision, as if through a camera — she tells it like it is — the camera never lies. I’m so glad a book like this has found its way into the hands of readers — there is a purity of vision that has the elements of a classic, timelessness is part of the art of this book. It’s gorgeous.
November 30, 2011
Kio Stark's 'Follow Me Down' gets the readers interest from page one. We sit through an interesting and not at all too short 110 pages of Lucy's adventures through the neighborhoods of an unnamed town (Brooklyn, NY?) while she looks for the person and meaning of a lost photograph taken some 30 years earlier. Each chapter/month is packed with eccentrics roaming mostly trying to not engage with her.
Could the book have been longer? Sure but I think that would've added another layer that made it unnecessary. My hope? Her next book is longer with more of the same. A great debut and another solid entry from the Red Lemonade publishing co (also check out Vanessa Veselka's 'Zazen'.
Could the book have been longer? Sure but I think that would've added another layer that made it unnecessary. My hope? Her next book is longer with more of the same. A great debut and another solid entry from the Red Lemonade publishing co (also check out Vanessa Veselka's 'Zazen'.
August 28, 2011
The fact that I just finished this book and barely remember a thing about it is not a good sign. I think I liked parts of it, but found the whole thing trying a little too hard to be "literary." Also, the entire plot hinges on whether or not you buy the conceit that a woman is willing to risk life and limb to find out who an anonymous man in a picture is. I mean, come on, use a dildo like everyone else.
December 27, 2011
The books summary of the story was quite misleading. Upon reading it, I was int-reed as portrait the story to flow of mystery and the unknown. It disappointed was told from a young girls view of how she wanted and longed for mystery but never quite got there. Come across strongly this this was the authors first novel. The author would set up the story line to lead you into suspense but never provide the drama related.
March 20, 2012
I did like this book, but for me there was something missing. I can't put my finger on it exactly. Really amazing descriptions of neighborhood interactions and space, but I wasn't terribly into the story. But it was a well executed little book, and I'd read her next novel, provided she writes one (I'm not sure why, but I thought - for no real reason; not like I read it somewhere - that she was a poet - am I wrong?).
July 29, 2011
I'm a bad reviewer but I love this book. It wasn't one I could read in snippets, I had to really give myself over, but when I did, it was like a seductive opiate and the tone stayed with me for days. And yes, I am on the same press with KIO, but I would say that anyway. It's earned.
July 1, 2011
4 1/2 stars - loved this book
January 22, 2016
Good! It's a quiet and well-drawn story, with a mysterious plot that moves it along nicely.
March 28, 2012
I enjoyed this spare and slender novel. Stark has some great imagery and lovely sentences.
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February 9, 2014Beautiful. The kind of book I will come back to. The pleasure is not just in the story, but in the mood and the way Stark uses words.
December 30, 2011
Beautifully written short novel. Capitvates the inner city, without being condensending.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews