I'd like to meet:
*STARRED REVIEW* A priest, a professor, the professor's wife, and his mistress--it sounds like the set-up for a dirty joke, but debut novelist Kenyon isn't fooling around. What begins as a riff on Peyton Place (salacious small-town intrigue) smoothly metamorphoses into a philosophical battle between science and religion. You would think that in attempting to deal with so many different themes-- shady clergy, top-secret scientific research, marital infidelity, lust, love, honor, faith-- Kenyon would run the risk of overwhelming readers. But, and this is why Kenyon is definitely an author to watch, she juggles all of her story's elements without dropping any of them--and, let's not forget, creates four very subtle and intriguing central characters. This is a novel quite unlike most standard commercial fare, a genre-bending story--part thriller, part literary slapdown with dialogue as the weapon of choice (think Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf)-- that makes us laugh, wince, and reflect all at the same time. Kenyon is definitely a keeper. -- David Pitt, Booklist, December 1, 2006 <>
Major Writing Influences:
[Which means that these writers make me squirm with envy, and if you like these authors, you'll probably like my first novel, RABID (April, 2007), and maybe my second novel, CALLOUS (May, 2008)]:
Thornton Wilder, Chuck Palahniuk, Kurt Vonnegut, Thom Jones, Virginia Woolf, Marge Piercy, Thom Jones, Margaret Atwood, Shakespeare, Edger Allen Poe, George Gordon (Lord Byron), William Blake, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, George Eliot, Jane Austen, William James, Friedrich Nietzshe, Vladimir Nabokov, John Le Carre, Anton Chekov, the Dalai Lama.
Wow, there're a lot of DWM's in there, huh?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>LIKE ROBIN COOK ON STEROIDS
“Rabid is one of those reads that hit the ground at full speed and pick up momentum from there. Either T.K. Kenyon doesn’t care where the brake pedal is or decided she didn’t need one and frankly, she's right. This is a full blown scorcher of a novel. Dual themes; out-of-control scientific research, and Pedophilia make hot-as-the-devil premises and great material for Kenyon’s fascinating scientific and philosophical tirades. Science and religion. Rabid gives no quarter. The characters are flawed. You feel their pain, their fear. They sear their way into your subconscious. Still, you root for them. The American priesthood is infested with pedophiles. The reasons have never been explained better, made more exciting, or offered as much hope for the future. Get yourself a copy, strap yourself into your favorite chair, and find out what’s really been going on behind closed doors.â€
–Art Tirrell, author of The Secret Ever Keeps.
To her credit, Kenyon manages to rein her characters in nicely at the conclusion of this impressive medical thriller." -- Publisher's Weekly
"RABID is a solid good read by first time novelist TK Kenyon, a gifted writer who has crafted a book of such mystery that you find yourself, at midnight, on the edge of your seat, asking, 'What's next? What's next?'"
-- Thom Jones, Award-Winning author of: The Pugilist at Rest, Cold Snap, Sonny Liston was a Friend of Mine
"RABID is a biopsy of our heated emotions and troublesome philosophies. Kenyon puts the vanishing point between science and religion under an electron microscope, and what she finds there is as thrilling as a discovery and as shocking as a revelation."
-- J.C. Hallman, author of: The Chess Artist, The Devil Is A Gentleman
