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Availability:
Only 1 left in stock, order soon!
Arrives
Thursday, Nov 5
At a glance
- Condition
- New
- Dimensions
- 5.88 x 1 x 8.5 in
- Weight
- 14.1 oz
- Publisher
- Little, Brown & Co.
- Publication date
- January 26, 2006
- Language
- English
- Print length
- 277 pages
Description
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. Read more
Specs 8
| Publisher | Little, Brown & Co. |
|---|---|
| Publication date | January 26, 2006 |
| Language | English |
| Print length | 277 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0316735043 |
| ISBN-13 | 49 |
| Item Weight | 14.1 ounces |
| Dimensions | 5.88 x 1 x 8.5 inches |
No specs match.
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Top Amazon Reviews
A realization of Whitman?
Format: Hardcover
Kathryn Davis is a new author to me. Critically recognized for some of her other work, Davis has somehow managed to stay in the popular shadows of fiction. Now, with the publication of her sixth book, The Thin Place, hopefully this will drag her into the light of being well known, inventive, and incredibly literate. This book tells the tale of the citizens of Varennes, a little town close to the Canadian border, who are also closely connected by little silver threads of desire, envy, anger, greed, love, lust, and growth. It starts with three girls finding a body on the beach, and one of the girls striving for the miraculous and bringing the man back to life. Over the pages we meet an elderly lady living in a retirement home, her son who jumps from marriage to marriage because he loves women, another woman who restores books, one who ushers in church, a teacher who is putting on a play for his students which brings us back to the girls. The Thin Place is by no means an easy novel or a quick read. It demands your attention from the first page, and should anything wrestle your focus away for even a moment, you find yourself lost. Partially this is due to Davis' incredible fluid writing style. One might liken it to a stream running over your page, as attention shifts about in a scene much as if a camera would in filming erratically. It's in this fluidity that the beauty of Davis' prose rests. She doesn't ignore the meager nor the less-important, everything gets a voice in her writing; from dogs, to beaver, to lichen to the ice sheets moving over the earth in its great sculpting array. Much of this reminds me of Whitman and his poetry. As he strove to encompass all around him in his verse, Davis strives to encompass all in her paragraphs. The effect, for both, in enlighting and illuminating. Both highlight the interconnectedness of everything; of how we all live in dangerously tight webs and should not expect to move without effecting all around. The Thin Place is a great novel. It is demanding, exacting, and noticing all. It is a gentle roller coaster ride in literature that you never quite sure when you'll get off, but when you do, you'll want to get on all over again.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2006 by James Hiller
Deep Dream
Format: Hardcover
I read the library copy of this wonderful book, then bought it for my own library because this is a book I will read over and over. Not only the language and images, the characters and places, but the spiritual, other-worldly, whole-worldly themes drew me into the mystery of creation. I got to hear Kathryn Davis speak at the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing last month and her presence and shared insights lived up to the masterful content of her novels. She's a deep, imaginative thinker who plumbs her ideas to the core and then takes them out into the starry universe.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2010 by forsythia
Different for everyone - but worth the "trouble"
Format: Hardcover
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 place," the division between this world and the next that is thinner in Varennes than in other places. I envisioned ghosts or magical realism, of sorts. In short, this book was not what I expected. That being said, there is an element of the supernatural in this book, but only one element. The whole of the book is based firmly and viscerally in reality. Davis has an extremely keen ability at description and fluid prose, one of the best I've read, and I often found myself delighted by the aptness of her descriptions, putting into words ideas that have fleetingly crossed my mind (like the description of dogs' heads smelling of popcorn). Other reviewers, and friends of mine that have read the book, have found it confusing, or difficult to stick with. I disagree - although there are many characters, and the prose deviates regularly from the plot (i.e., the daily lives of the town's residents, and how their paths ultimately cross) to describe the thoughts of beavers, moose, lichen, or to meditate on the creation of the world, or to jump back to medieval times to explore events of the Bible - it was easy to form a picture of the place, to differentiate the characters, and to understand the prevailing themes of interconnectedness and transience. For some, this will be the story of a town and its residents. For others, this will be a religious novel, while others will find it a philosophical journey. Whatever the book is to each reader, I know that it will be unlike anything you have read before, and you will get something out of it, IF you open your mind and let yourself be swept away with the current of the story.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2006 by JET
Couldn't finish it...
Format: Paperback
I couldn't make heads or tails of this book and more importantly I couldn't stay awake. This book didn't make much sense to me and life is too short so I didn't bother to finish it. I realized when I was on page 70 something and I couldn't even write a one sentence summary on the book that it was probably time to move on.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2007 by No Thanks
Glad I didn't buy the book
Format: Hardcover
The first time I tried it from the library this is what I thought: The font on this library hardback is too small. I made it through the first chapter and it looks to be a good book. Put in a request for the large-print or audio version at the library. Requested that it be available to Kindle at Amazon. Hopefully I can try this again someday. *** Second try: Now, I have not only the large print hard cover edition from the library but I bought the Audible version with Shelly Frasier as narrator. The font on the hardback is larger but the space between lines and lack of paragraph spaces still make this a hard read for me. So I listened more than read. Shelly has a nice voice and reads the story as I feel I would have in my head. It is a pleasant book. A pleasant story. But for the most part I feel I have lived a life similar to this having lived in two small towns and been a member of numerous churches. Peyton Place. Gossip city. Mostly where I lost my hope for human kind. I felt nothing for the characters. I felt no growth. I did like the dog and the cat. But felt Christopher Moore did a better job with the inner thoughts of a dog in The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. So the dog brought up the star rating to two stars. I had hope. I kept waiting for the point. Then I started waiting for the death of the people as it seemed that was where the author was determined to go. But my decision to raise this to three stars is the poetic prose. Kathryn Davis' descriptions are marvelous. I suppose if this were one of the only books in a cabin in the woods this would be great to read. With 3,000 books on my Kindle (or actually on my Calibre) to read this--well, I am glad to be on to some other read.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2012 by darswords
Compelling themes but in a disjointed narrative that left me cold
Format: Paperback
The themes of the natural world and mysticism told from a collage of perspectives from people, animals and nature itself drew me to the book. Unfortunately unlike a Virgina Woolf novel (who's inspiration can be felt here) the theme doesn't build or compel you to turn the next page. So many characters are introduced chapter by chapter that it's confusing but worse the connecting threads are so weak the themes never grow. I could see if we move from person to person or to animal or back in time, that the story could tighten if the ideas were passed eloquently (like "The Waves" for example) but here they are disconnected short observations. It feels like notes to write a book rather than an actual novel. The girl with powers to heal is ill defined as are so many of the inhabitants of this small town. I felt more drawn into the descriptions of animals than the humans. And worse, without giving it away, I found the concluding scene utterly preposterous. Somewhere that the author decided she wanted to go to before writing them book and then threw in at the end to give it all meaning.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2019 by Antoine Doinel
One of the best books I've read this year
Format: Hardcover
This is a story of what lies beneath the ordinary. Told from many points of view including those of a dog and a beaver, this book tells the stories of ordinary people going about their lives in a northern U.S. town who have no idea how magical their lives truly are. There are deaths, romances, accidents, church committee meetings, old stories told, porcupines chased, and school operettas performed, while beyond the ordinary daily grind, nature churns on in an alarming fashion (if only we would notice it) and miracles (one character can raise the dead) go by unnoticed in the dash of everyday life. Quirky and rewarding, I liked it so much I bought it in hardcover.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2006 by Beachgrrl
Weird, and Funny (to me)
Format: Paperback
The prose might head in challenging directions for many, but that's what I look for in a book. The odd characters and eldritch setting make for a really great book.
Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2020 by Denver Dilettante