Synopses & Reviews
In a thin place, according to legend, the membrane separating this world from the spirit world is almost nonexistent. The small New England town of Varennes is such a place, and Kathryn Davis transports us there - revealing a surprising pageant of life as, in the course of one summer, Varennes' tranquillity is shattered by the arrival of a threatening outsider, worldly and otherworldly forces come into play, and a young local girl finds her miraculous gift for resurrecting the dead tested by the conflict between logic and wish.
Review
"Davis writes hallucinatory, literate prose, and adopts a cosmic perspective: she is concerned with nothing less than describing the towns every waking moment." New Yorker
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"No amount of character sketching or plot summary, however, can begin to convey the experience of reading this strange and delightful novel." Washington Post
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"Cosmic without being florid, funny without being flip, terrifying without being trite...Davis gives us a world animated by spirit." Seattle Times
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"Davis is one of the most inventive novelists at work today....There is no adequate summing up of The Thin Place. The pieces, in this case, are so much greater than the whole." Chicago Tribune
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"It is difficult not to be exhilarated by Davis' soaring ambitions, her hallucinatory use of language, her fearlessness." San Francisco Chronicle
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"If the events left me unsatisfied, that's at least partly because I wasn't ready to vacate the town of Varennes." Christian Science Monitor
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"Never has Davis' prose seemed more effortless....The Thin Place is a bright, shimmering book, and the variety of voices come together like a globe cut from glass in the sun." Chicago Sun-Times
Synopsis
Discovering a dead body at a lake near the Canadian border, twelve-year-old Mees Kipp inexplicably brings the man back to life and realizes that she possesses an extraordinary gift that irrevocably shapes the lives of Mees, her two friends, and their community. By the author of Versailles. Reprint.
Synopsis
The prize-winning author of Versailles tells the story of a small New England village unsettled by a young girl's unearthly gift.
Synopsis
The prize-winning author of Versailles tells the story of a small New England village unsettled by a young girl's unearthly gift. In Varennes, a town near the Canadian border, three girls come across the body of a dead man on the local lake's beach. Two of them run to get help, but twelve-year-old Mees Kipp stays with the body and somehow, inexplicably, brings it back to life. Her mysterious gift is at the center of this haunting and transcendent novel.
About the Author
Davis has received a Kafka Prize, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.