Sister North by Jim Kokoris

Sam, an attorney from Chicago led a mundane life. Down on his luck after a tragic (violent) incident, which greatly impacted his life. He starts to watch Sister North on T.V. and feels he may have a chance at redemption, if only he could talk to the Nun. He travels to Lake Eagleton Wisconsin to meet Sister North and speak to her personally. But when he arrives he finds she is missing, not sure when she is coming back, or if she will return at all.

An original story that moves at a steady pace with complex characters. Each person wants to speak to the Nun for their own personal reason. Each is battling their own demons, yet they all seek the same thing, guidance, forgiveness, acceptance. With vivid detail and raw emotions I really got to feel what each person felt, especially Sam. Troubled as he may be, I was still hoping he was able to find what he was looking for. Overall I found Sister North an (emotional) enjoyable read and feel others will enjoy it as well. ( )

I first became a fan of Jim Korkoris after reading his terrific novel, The Pursuit of Other Interests. 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.

( )

The opening paragraph had me hooked: “Nine months after his divorce, Sam stopped wearing underwear. It was a practical decision rather than any type of statement…He worked in a very proper, very conservative Chicago law firm that had a dress code, and while the dress code did not specifically mention underwear, it was definitely implied”. The entire first chapter lived up to the opening paragraph, and I was convinced I had my favorite book of the year. Then I hit chapter two – I don’t think I cracked a smile. And by chapter three the book was careening all over the place from laugh out loud farce to depressing doses of realism with a fair share of soul searching thrown in. I don’t do soul searching. By the end, it was NOT my favorite book of the year.

Sam is in need of a change. Through his foibles in the first chapter he experiences a traumatic event in chapter two (hence, no laughing), and begins questioning the what’s, why’s and how’s of his life. While brooding in his seedy hotel room, he discovers Sister North, a TV nun described as part 700 Club/part Dr. Phil. Convinced she will know the answers to life’s mysteries, he decides to visit her – even though he himself questions the existence of God. Once in Lake Eagleton, Wisconsin, he meets the characters of the town as well as the characters of life all seeking guidance from Sister North. What is Sister North to each person? Can one person on earth embody the love, understanding and healing of God above? And if so, how? Is it right to make money off her “flock”? Each person’s relationship to Sister North is examined, and Sam learns more about himself as he understands others.

Overall the book was well written, entertaining and a quick and easy read. Kokoris introduces a plethora of characters, each unique and most are fairly well developed throughout the narrative, and it is likely that a reader can relate with at least one of them. This (possibly unintended) personalized reading experience thus creates a struggle between the relatively intense stories of some of the characters and the natural humor and wit of the author. As the book progresses, the humor becomes less consistent, to the point that its arrival becomes almost jarring. That doesn’t make it a bad book, it simply results in an overall narrative which does not live up to the expectations established in chapter one. ( )

From the first paragraph of Jim Kokoris's Sister North, we know we're in the hands of a writer who knows how to slap two sentences together and make them funny:

Nine months after his divorce, Sam stopped wearing underwear. It was a practical decision rather than any type of statement. After Carol left him, he remained committed to underwear, thinking it a fundamental part of his life. He worked in a very popular, very conservative Chicago law firm that had a dress code, and while the dress code did not specifically mention underwear, it was definitely implied.

The chuckles snowball from that point onward.

Though Sister North has its share of feel-good syrup drizzled over the narrative, especially near the climax, I walked away from the novel with a smile on my face. Kokoris has a knack for the oddball, off-putting moments that resemble real life, but are always odd enough to exist only in literature or the movies—sort of like you were looking at your family in a funhouse mirror tilted sideways.

Witness the opening sentence of his previous novel, The Rich Part of Life: "The day we won the lottery I was wearing wax lips that my father had bought for the Nose Picker and me at a truck stop." I bought the book based on that one sentence.

Sister North has an equal share of one-liners that punctuate the novel with all the zany exuberance of Jim Carrey on a good day. For instance, one character says of another, "[He] would probably have my legs decapitated."

The novel centers around 45-year-old Sam Gamett, an exhausted soul who's certainly run the gamut of life by the time we reach the third chapter. Not only is he out of clean underwear, but his wife has left him, he's living in the thin-walled Get Down Motel listening to other couples have sex and an irate customer just walked into his law firm, murdered his secretary, then committed suicide. Sam agonizes over why he was spared. As he sits around the Get Down, he becomes obsessed with the titular nun who has a call-in television show. Sam is looking for a way out of his aimless, ambitionless, indifferent life and Sister North is a signpost. The owl-faced nun preaches the gospel of hope—that hope can heal even the most broken, jaded heart.

Despite the fact that [Sam's] father had been a minister, he was not a religious person. He didn't believe in God, but he found himself believing in Sister North. Her logic and sincerity made him feel better, made him see hope as a tangible, necessary thing.

Unable to reach her by telephone, Sam decides to pay her a visit at her secluded retreat in tiny, quirky Lake Eagleton, Wisconsin. The novel really takes off as Sam gets to know the residents and the tourists who have pilgrimaged there in search of Sister North. Sam is disappointed to learn that the television nun has mysteriously left town, but he hangs around anyway—mostly on account of the good-looking waitress Meg, a recluse who keeps her heart locked up tight as a chastity belt.

As everyone awaits the return of Sister North, Sam finds himself falling in love with the seemingly indifferent Meg and soon he's one of those tourists who never seem to leave the town. Everybody who pilgrimages to Lake Eagleton is looking for a second chance in life. Billy Bags, the enigmatic town weirdo (a term which could apply to nearly all residents), tells Sam, "We're all looking for a way out of something."

Most of the folks in this book seem to have wandered over Hollywood's Central Casting Office—Charming/Offbeat Division. Though the characters are just a hair's length shy of stereotype, Kokoris keeps the dialogue and prose smart and funny—enough so that we're ready to forgive nearly any cliché that pops up. ( )