SoMa

By Kemble Scott

Book Overview

Welcome To The Neighborhood

To outsiders, San Francisco is all one big city. But to those in the know, there is SoMa, South of Market, where sleek eateries are squeezed between bail bonds storefronts and high-priced lofts look out over still rough edges. It's home to a generation of hipsters disillusioned by the dotcom bust, restless and searching for the next thrill, the next high, the next step too far. Sex, drugs, kink--you can find it anywhere in SoMa, if you know where to look. But first, you'll need your tour guides. There's Raphe, a writer torn between two worlds, belonging to neither. Lauren, the poor little rich girl living on the edge and pushing farther out. Mark, beautiful and cruel, who lives for games, the more extreme, the better. Baptiste, hot, smooth, and maybe as real as it gets. And Julie, both an object of desire and a pretty pawn to be played.

In a glittering, surreal subculture of private sex clubs and kept boys, identity theft and betrayal, nihilism, redemption, and sometimes love, they're spinning out of control and into each other's orbits, desperately looking for something real--something that will show them who they really are. In this provocative, intense novel, Kemble Scott puts a new neighborhood on the literary map for good, in a tale that is disturbing, gritty, wholly original, and utterly unforgettable.

Praise for SoMa and Kemble Scott:

"Scott provides us with an insider's look at a little known and gritty underground world. . .Shockingly, his raw and gritty account of this dark world is all true, which makes for an even more fun ride." --Andy Behrman, bestselling author of Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania

"I read the first page of SoMa and never put it down until I read the last page. . .I know people who are less real than these characters." --Joe Quirk, bestselling author of The Ultimate Rush

"SoMa tells. . .what's really happening in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood. . .It's one man's story of a twisted journey and compromised redemption. San Francisco can be a city of extremes, and we see one here." --Craig Newmark, Creator of Craigslist

Kemble Scott is the pen name of a successful and influential journalist. Using this pseudonym, Kemble is a writer and editor at San Francisco's subculture e-zine, SoMa Literary Review. In the non-fiction world of television news, he has been honored with three Emmy awards and is an alumnus of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0758215495
• ISBN13: 9780758215499
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corporation
• Length: 318 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

SoMa is Mesmerizing

"SoMa by Kemble Scott is one engaging tale. So pulled into protagonist Raphe's world (South of Market, San Francisco), I read the first chapters standing not sitting. Scott is a wordsmith. Mesmerizing." www.LoveMadeOfHeart.com/blog

Gay "Narcissus and Goldmund" kept me up all night

I'm straight and squeamish. If somebody had told me what I was in for, I wouldn't have started reading. But a friend recommended it, and I didn't put it down until I reached the last page two hours before I had to be at work. Absolutely fascinating, engrossing, and characters you root for so much you're willing to follow them through their extreme behavior. There is definitely a voyeuristic appeal because I'm seeing a world I would never otherwise enter, but it's deeper than that. You end up asking questions about the meaning of love and life. I think it's a lot better than the famous "Narcissus and Goldmund," which attempts the same quest-for-meaning in a world of hedonism less successfully. I think SoMa is destined to be a classic.

This is the San Francisco people REALLY want to know about...

San Francisco has a reputation for being wild, but few books dare to take readers into the city's underground. Kemble Scott's SoMa exposes it all...and more. The novel follows the stories of young people out for extreme thrills in the city's South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood. They push themselves to the edge as a way to figure out who they really are. The book is apparently based on real events, and I believe it. I see stuff like this all the time here in SF. People are like kids in a candy shop. And some end up having too much candy. But this isn't just happening here. It's happening everywhere in the world where young people are free to explore their most intimate desires. Scott captures the truth about the generation that's emerging in this new millennium. You'll be thinking about this book for a long time. In a way, SoMa is very subversive. On one level, it's very funny and entertaining and shocking. It hooks you and you can't put it down. I read it in a day! That's the dirty trick. The author has made this an easy and amusing book to read, but then he really twists it so you won't get it out of your head. When I talk to others who have read this book, they each zero in on one thing they remember that they just can't shake. And each person picks something different! How weird is that? I highly recommend this book. And if you are a bigot, a sexist or sexually insecure, I recommend it even more -- you especially NEED to read it. Thorsten

The Edge is Infinity + ONE

From the edge of sanity, insanity, release, discovery, revenge..and a host of other possibilities. SOMA will take you there, and to places beyond your belief. Raphe, SOMA's out-of-work dot.com protagonist is on a quest/journey, a trip that permits him to fully grasp the meaning of self-discovery and hate. Revenge is the element that drives him, a revenge taken out on himself and upon a twisted soul worthy of total humiliation and destruction. This is a story about the perverse and twisted underbelly of gay San Francisco, a San Francisco that is beyond imagination. In a sense, if one were to analyze the novel, the characters are personifications, and the story is one of EVERYMAN, taken to the edge of reason. SOMA is a "one-sitting" reading...once you begin it, you will not put it down until you finish it.

San Francisco's Big Novel for the Oughties

Every decade or so produces The Big San Francisco Novel. On the Road in the 50s, Tales of the City in the 70's, Joy Luck Club in the 90s. So here is San Francisco's BIG BOOK for the Oughties, and a great kickoff to the 21st Century it is. If John Steinbeck were still with us and had chosen to roam the intriguing neighborhood south of Market Street (hence the nickname "SoMa"), he might well have written a terrific book like this one, giving the reader the same vicarious thrill that Steinbeck gave to his less adventuresome readers. This book is the literary equivalent of hiking up to a great waterfall - refreshing and exciting and bracing. Read it now!