Sleep Walk Society - Softcover

Kendare Blake was born in Seoul, South Korea, and has lived in London, New York, and Cambridge Minnesota. She earned her B.S. in business administration/finance from Ithaca College and an M.A. in writing from Middlesex University in London. She has two new releases due out in Fall 2011/2012 with Tor. She was a Momaya Press 2007 prize winner, and is published on various online markets, including Mirror Dance and Expanded Horizons.

Sleepwalk Society Jayne Pupek Violet is a girl who doesn t see her own beauty. She refers to her name is "a joke, a plain girl having a name that s also a color. Violet says, One of my boyfriends in high school said that the only color on my face was in my eyes, and that was the color of a faded dollar bill. He also said they d be good looking if only they could express something. The year is 2002 and 18-year-old Violet is beginning summer break from college classes, a summer that will bring unexpected conflicts and discoveries. In her compelling debut, The Sleepwalk Society, Kendare Blake explores what it means to define ones self and how expectations and relationships influence the direction of one's life. Violet says, But over time, we get tired of other people. Other people get you caught up in things; they make it difficult to be what we are, indifferent, the sleepwalk society, drifting around the center of our lives. I know that by the end of the summer, it will just be us three, sitting in a car somewhere, talking less and less but louder and louder, one last rail against the new semester coming down to beat us over the heads. This summer doesn t turn out to be anything like previous summers. While on summer break, Violet's father also gives her an ultimatum: she will either declare a major or he will stop funding her education. Violet's mother, an alcoholic, wants Violet to return to school. "In the end, they both want the same thing, my mother and my father; only they want it for different reasons. My father wants me to go to school and be successful so that I will be like him, to prove that his life is worthy of envy. My mother wants me to go so that I ll never be like her, to prove that her life was a price that she didn t have to pay." The ultimatum from her father isn t the only thing weighing on Violet. Dynamics change dramatically between the trio of best friends--Violet, Terran, and Joey--with disturbing consequences and unexpected outcomes for each of them. Violet also meets Brandon, who sees more beauty and goodness in Violet than she sees in herself. The events that unfold over the summer causes Violet to question everything she believes about friendship and herself, and to emerge bruised but more confident than she ever imagined. Blake writes with a graceful subtlety and insight as she creates a complex and intriguing cast of characters, most notably Violet, who is wonderfully vulnerable and honest as she navigates the difficult journey toward independence and self-discovery. --Jayne Pupek-

...this is certainly an engaging and above all emotionally honest young adult novel, the likes of which are far too rare in today s market. Violet is no cardboard heroine; she is concerned more with figuring out herself and her world than with vampiric tonsil hockey and so her voyage of self-discovery is at its core more painfully, poetically real in its simplicity that any epic romance could ever be. a rawly realistic depiction of teenage life. It is an unfortunate trend in young adult fiction today that the genre s teenage protagonists tend to be concerned more with love and present happiness than the future. Twilight s Bella Swan, the most widely-known adolescent protagonist since a certain boy wizard made his way onto the literary scene, defines her life around her vampire lover, choosing to forego further education and any chance of a career in favor of immortal codependency, centuries in which the present has extended itself indefinitely. So it is no exaggeration to say that Violet, the plain, wryly observant, angsty heroine of Kendare Blake s Sleepwalk Society is a welcome change: a character whose meditations on life, the future, philosophy, and mankind are if not particularly original nevertheless all the more poignant in their familiarity. Violet is no cardboard heroine; --Tara Isabella Burton

...this is certainly an engaging and above all emotionally honest young adult novel, the likes of which are far too rare in today s market. Violet is no cardboard heroine; she is concerned more with figuring out herself and her world than with vampiric tonsil hockey and so her voyage of self-discovery is at its core more painfully, poetically real in its simplicity that any epic romance could ever be. a rawly realistic depiction of teenage life. It is an unfortunate trend in young adult fiction today that the genre s teenage protagonists tend to be concerned more with love and present happiness than the future. Twilight s Bella Swan, the most widely-known adolescent protagonist since a certain boy wizard made his way onto the literary scene, defines her life around her vampire lover, choosing to forego further education and any chance of a career in favor of immortal codependency, centuries in which the present has extended itself indefinitely. So it is no exaggeration to say that Violet, the plain, wryly observant, angsty heroine of Kendare Blake s Sleepwalk Society is a welcome change: a character whose meditations on life, the future, philosophy, and mankind are if not particularly original nevertheless all the more poignant in their familiarity. Violet is no cardboard heroine; she is concerned more with figuring out herself and her world than with vampiric tonsil hockey and so her voyage of self-discovery is at its core more painfully, poetically real in its simplicity that any epic romance could ever be. The novel, which follows Violet and her friends the infuriatingly charming Terran, the immature Joey, and newcomer Brandon through the summer following their freshman year of college, is short on plot proper. The main storyline, Joey s relationship with Terran and the effect it has on Violet, meanders through Violet s musings on 9/11, her parents alcoholism, and her feelings for Brandon, Joey s cousin conveniently in town for the summer. Yet it is these meanderings the slow series of mundane events that make the novel what it is: a rawly realistic depiction of teenage life. When Violet analyzes her parents decaying marriage, or when she discusses The Real World with love interest Brandon in a series of marijuana-tinged conversations, she is passing through a gauntlet that is at once universal and yet vastly under-described in contemporary YA fiction; we cannot imagine Gossip Girl s Blair Waldorf, for example, any more concerned with existential truth than with her latest lot of Louboutins. Yet none of what Violet is saying or realizing is particularly new or profound. The adult world is often fake; cheaters often win; people are immature and selfish and foolish any adult worth his or her salt has figured it out long ago. When Violet, for example, expounds upon the nature of Arab-American relations after an encounter with a non-white deli owner, some more mature readers might cringe on her behalf. But for Violet, each realization (made with a cocky sense that she has figured out some great philosophical truth) is new and Blake is able to capture the pain and poignancy of these first coming-of-age realization, along with the sense of discovery, of re-inventing the wheel, that it attends. The reader may cringe for Violet, but more than that he is cringing at his own teenage self, the universality of which Blake channels expertly. A young adult reader Blake s target audience might not appreciate the ironic contrast between what Violet knows and what she thinks she knows as well as an older reader, but that is by no means a negative: if anything, youth might cement the emotional connection between reader and protagonist. The minor characters are sufficiently well-drawn for a young adult novel. A standout is Joey, whose relationship --Tara Isabella Burton