This review originally appeared in June, in the launch issue of KGB Bar Lit Magazine, where I am a contributing writer and editor. Please visit the magazine for contemporary fiction, poetry, reviews, and cool happenings in the literary world.
In The Thin Place, Davis creates another world, a semblance similar to the one we inhabit, yet composed of different primordial ether than our own. Davis details the events of one season in a conjured New England town. And conjured, it is, for seemingly ordinary Varennes is a surreal landscape in which the worlds of mortals and immortals intertwine. Nothing is what it seems – tragedies seem to repeat themselves as if ghosts were enacting rituals. Twelve year old girls are petty, stubby, sexual, precocious priestesses, men are resurrected, insane women sing mellifluously in the church choir and aging women in the Crockett’s home converse with wisps. An archaeologist’s wife is continuously unfaithful but he doesn’t mind since it affords him the liberty of living alone in his tent in the Arctic. Cats, dogs and insects love and introspect. There are no heroes or heroines – it is as if every character is given equal significance.
The inspiration for her sixth novel, Davis notes, came from her visit to a convent outside of Peekskill, overlooking the Hudson River. As one of the sisters, gravely ill, lay dying, the bells of church poised to ring in ritual, she miraculously recovered. When Davis enquired how such a thing was possible, another sister told her that this a thin place, where the membrane between this world and the spirit world was very thin – anything could happen.[1]
In Varennes, time ceases to exist in sequential form - time treads so heavily that is leaves impressions in this thin place. The story lacks progression – if one were to revisit Varennes – the same spirits would roam and exude their thoughts, as if in purgatory. There is no buildup – and when the inevitable climax occurs, one is caught aware and unaware simultaneously. Temporal things do not seem to matter – there are timeless spiritual battles to be had. The book is unconcerned with plot or with actions, but with what thoughts and what feelings had a hand in commanding muscle to move and wreak action.
Stylistically, The Thin Place, is reminiscent of descriptions present in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. In introspections, Davis uses repeating monosyllabic words to signify important moods and obsessions in the stream of consciousness narrative. Like Mrs. Dalloway, the book rapidly shifts from one character’s perspective to another. Yet what it is most similar to is not so much a book, but a work of mixed media assemblage art.
The Thin Place is composed of juxtapositions of police reports, diary entries, church service programs, horoscopes, private thoughts of humans, animals, insects, God, nature – consciousness streams unbounded. (All this leads to a sense of privilege but also to a sense of confusion which blends the characters, especially that of Helen and Billie, Piet Ziebrugge’s mother and love interest.) Their lives and thoughts are so intertwined that people seem indistinct, their membranes so permeable and their thoughts filling the environment as if they were skinless, boundless beings; strangely amoebic as if they were auras of thought rather than humans.
Given the profuseness of thoughts, it is unexpected that Davis’s treatment of the characters is so entirely unsentimental that it is nearly pitiless. Not only does she stay entirely unbiased towards good and evil – it is as if everyone is given equal standing, despite what the reader may perceive as inherent emphasis. No one is entirely likable nor lovable. Even the few characters for whom she has distaste, mother and daughter Kathryn and Sunny Crockett, are given a chance to express their thoughts, albeit limited airtime. To Davis, Kathy and Sunny Crockett represent the true evil in this world – the world that seeks to benefit itself at the expense of others and nature; the world that is soulless and spiritless and does not desire redemption. Characters that we come to care about are reduced to lesser fates and non-existences, and unapologetically so – as a statement of fact. Perhaps Davis’ view of the natural world is that it is indifferent and cruelly nonchalant. It is then unsurprising that the biggest role is played by Davis- she is a resolutely unsentimental prophet for her Varennes.
I could not help but wonder if all of these characters were representations of the author herself – because more than a work of fiction, I found the book to be philosophical text, a powerful introspection of the author’s mind, reminiscent of Agnes Varda's 'Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse,' (The Gleaners and I) where the subject matter is supposedly about gleaners of all varieties in France, but it actually provides the backdrop on which Varda casts her anxieties, observations, sense of goodness and evil.
Davis is a demanding author who assumes a certain sapience from her readers. She refers to Julian of Norwich[2] with nary a description, numerous references to the bible, and books that must have been read. More demanding than whether or not one is well and widely read, Davis forces one to retreat and retrace one’s thoughts. The Thin Place is a self-conscious (self-aware) read, deserves a careful reading, in a quiet place where one can introspect.
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[1] Hogan, Ron. “Kathryn Davis on Thin Places.” January 3, 2006, http://www.beatrice.com/archives/001877.html
[2] Julian or Juliana of Norwich (c. 1342 – 1416) – considered the greatest of the English mystics. Her ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ explores the great love of God for men and the detestable character of human sin.
I am currently in the process of reading this novel for a class. It is pretty interesting, although difficult to grasp at first.
Posted by: Nathan | May 10, 2007 at 11:59 PM