The Thin Place, Kathryn Davis
The Thin Place, Kathryn Davis
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The Thin Place

Author: Kathryn Davis

Narrator: Shelly Frasier

Unabridged: 7 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 02/15/2006

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. The Thin Place is the story of these girls, their town, and the worldly and otherworldly forces that come into play there over one summer. Writing at the peak of her powers, Kathryn Davis draws on commonplace forms—police blotters, garden almanacs, Sunday sermons, horoscopes, and diaries—to convey the rich rhythms of life in Varennes. From the ladies in the old-folks' home to trappers, lawyers, teachers, ministers, drug addicts—even the dogs and cats, beavers and bears—she peoples this novel with astonishingly vivid beings. The extraordinary comes to visit an ordinary town.

"A delightful, surprise-filled narrative: Davis's best yet."—Kirkus Review(starred review)

"Cosmic in her vision, provocative and comic in her storytelling, Kathryn Davis draws on sources as diverse as quantum physics and tales of saints and miracles and makes place a key element in her exploratory fiction."—Booklist (starred review)

"Never has Davis' prose seemed more effortless...The Thin Place is a bright, shimmering book."—Chicago Sun-Times

About Kathryn Davis

Kathryn Davis has received a Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches in the graduate program at Washington University in St. Louis. The Thin Place is her sixth novel.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Cameron on June 11, 2012

On the back jacket of Kathryn Davis' The Thin Place—in the area reserved for praise from critics, other authors, or any distant celebrity—is a quote from a Kirkus review. Though I don't have the actually words in front of me, if I remember right, it said "Davis, God bless her, assumes that her reade......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on August 16, 2015

An odd, beautiful book. It's different from anything else I've ever read. In examining the course of a single summer in a small New England town, it weaves together questions about consciousness (human, animal, even plant), social interactions, the connection between humans and the natural world, th......more

Goodreads review by Erin on December 16, 2014

You want a traditional novel? Look elsewhere. I love novels that act like novels as much as the next person, but I also loved this. It does not act like a novel. Well it does insofar as it's prose, with transitions, and paragraphs. But y'all, when you read this book, know that you don't NEED to reme......more

Goodreads review by Maura on September 05, 2017

British readers will know what I mean when I say that this is a Marmite book. Like the notorious British savoury spread, you either love it or you hate it. I love this book. (Marmite, too. Not sure if that means anything ...) I love the beautiful prose, and sharp descriptions. I love the omniscient......more

Goodreads review by Jennifer on January 03, 2008

The premise of the story has been summarized by other reviewers, so I won't take the time to do it here, but I will note that I bought this book after reading a review, thinking that it was going to be more focused on the supernatural, the review leading me to think that the focus was the "thin plac......more

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