Follow Me Down by Kio Stark

Follow Me Down Reviews

• 
  Brian

  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.
• 
  Julie H.

  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.
• 
  T. Greenwood

  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.
• 
  Richard Thomas

  [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.
• 
  Todd

  An absolutely phenomenally written book that is fast-paced, anxiety-ridden, and unequivocally captivating. Kio Stark develops a main character that can be summed up in one line from the text: obsession can be medicine. The main character is incredibly observant, as if the book was written to pay homage to all the people-watchers of the world.
  
  The book is about a proofreader (another example of her obsessiveness) and her accidental reception of a letter; it captures her journey, a voyage that has one purpose: to medicate. I won't say much more lest I reveal the ending. I can say that I appreciate Stark's ability to create an ending that leaves both the main character and the reader with the same feelings.
  
  I deeply enjoyed her rich use of language and metaphor; I felt she offered many valuable insights. Her writing, as with fellow Red Lemonade author
  Vanessa Veselka, blurs the line between poetry and prose. Follow Me Down is a rich book and you won't believe that you've only read 110 pages at the end.
• 
  Laura

  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.
• 
  Kevin Adams

  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'.
• 
  Adam

  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.
• 
  Dana

  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.
• 
  Amy

  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?).
• 
  Vanessa Veselka

  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.
• 
  Ben Lainhart

  I enjoyed this spare and slender novel. Stark has some great imagery and lovely sentences.
• 
  Jennifer Pickens

  Beautiful. 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.
• 
  Becky

  Beautifully written short novel. Capitvates the inner city, without being condensending.