The Thin Place

As I mentioned in my last entry, I just finished a book that I want to shout about from rooftops, but since that would probably get me arrested for disorderly conduct or un-American activity, I thought I'd post about it. The book is The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis, and I savored it for 3 months (rather than greedily devour it, as I do with most books I read). It was delicate, profound, and completely beautiful. I read a review of it in the McSweeney's magazine The Believer, and ordered it sight unseen. It takes place in recent years in the New England town of Varennes, which is a thin place - a place where the walls between superatural and natural, past and present, man and God are transparent. We see this world through the eyes of people, dogs, and sometimes inanimate objects. A young girl named Mees Kipp has the power to raise the dead, and does so fairly often. An elderly woman watches the world from her assisted living facility, only now seeing things she missed for her entire life. She is still of sharp mind and body, and we see first-hand what it must be like to be condescended to on an hourly basis.

The closest works I could compare this novel to are Mrs. Dalloway or The Hours. Rather than take the fantasy element of the story and run with it, Davis keeps everything internal - she is more interested in the underlying psychology of people. To keep the story grounded in some sense of reality, we are shown police records, 19th century diary entries, and things like grocery lists. She reminds me of my favorite author, A.S. Byatt in that she is not always kind in her assessments of her own characters. She is unsentimental and detached, even in regards to her characters who are children, and you rarely see that in novels.

When I went to pick it up from Mr. Shaver (who ordered it for me), he handed it to me, shaking his head, and said, "You really keep me on my toes when it comes to new fiction - where do you even hear about this stuff?" He proceeded to read me part of the inside jacket that talked about Mees' gift not responding to merit or morality - only to need (I'm paraphrasing). I would highly recommend it to anyone who liked the novels I mentioned above. While in New York last month, I found myself at The Strand bookstore (imagine that), so I picked up a copy of an earlier Davis novel called The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf. I read because I have an insatiable craving for fictional narratives that are meaningful to me (and, in a way, we all do - everyone writes a fictional narrative every night; it's called a dream), and this book reminded me of that.