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The Thin Place
A Novel
by Kathryn Davis


8.5

based on 15 reviews
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based on 10 votes
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Official Publisher Site

A 12-year-old girl in a small New England town boasts some unusual powers, such as the ability to bring people back to life and communicate with dogs.

Little, Brown & Co., 288 pages
01/26/2006
$23.95

ISBN: 0316735043

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Chicago Sun-Times Jessa Crispin

The Thin Place is a bright, shimmering book, and the variety of voices come together like a globe cut from glass in the sun, separating the light into tiny rainbows and then reconstructing them into pure white light.

Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp

"The Thin Place"... left me scraping the plate and looking around for stray crumbs

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Davis moves with such slithering ease from documenting the material world to describing the ineffable that the reader may occasionally feel disoriented. But a good part of the novel's pleasure lies exactly in that skewed dreaminess.

Publishers Weekly

Davis stretches relationships over centuries and species in this loopy follow-up to her historical, Versailles. [17 Oct 2005, p. 42]

San Francisco Chronicle Irina Reyn

With "The Thin Place," Davis is at the height of her powers; her prose... is so exquisite, that it appears to emanate from a supernatural source.

Booklist Donna Seaman

As strange and deadly events unfold, Davis works out a calculus of the accidental and the inevitable and maps the interface of the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine. [1 Dec 2005, p. 24]

Kirkus Reviews

A delightful, surprise-filled narrative: Davis's best yet. [15 Sep 2005, p. 99]

Chicago Tribune Beth Kephart

Davis is, as I've said, fearless. She takes us to heaven and to hell and back--attempts to locate, among so many atmospheric vapors, the place and purpose of the soul. I'm in awe of her achievement with this book, of her utterly fantastic and unfettered mind. [12 Feb 2006]

Washington Post Julia Livshin

No amount of character sketching or plot summary can begin to convey the experience of reading this strange and delightful novel.

Library Journal Lawrence Rungren

While the end result could have been a bit too airily "spiritual," Davis's focus on commonplace activities within the community keeps the novel firmly grounded. [1 Oct 2005, p. 64]

Boston Globe Barbara Fisher

This is a deeply religious book in its way.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Fiona Foster

The Thin Place is not Kathryn Davis's most accomplished novel, but it is as unique, thoughtful and confounding as her best work. [28 Jan 2006, p. D6]

The New York Times Book Review Lucy Ellman

What the novel needs is a cataclysmic climax, a big bang, not this feeble, frightened little acorn of an ending. After such a buildup, such omniscience on the part of the author, you don't expect Davis's courage to desert her, but it does. Nonetheless, she has done something great here, something heathen, anarchic, democratic. She has given everyone and every thing a voice: animals, plants, children, coma patients, even the earth itself.

Salon Laura Miller

Getting a grip on Davis' purpose here can be a little like grasping the lichen's weird language. It's not that "The Thin Place" is cryptic, exactly, but its mysteries come at you sidewise, through rhythms and inferences, rather than head-on.

Village Voice Joy Press

Spectacularly weird and layered.

The average user rating for this book is 8.5 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

penny p gave it a10:
the characters are instantly belevable. The outher leads us to care about questions we have never asked before.

Joan gave it a9:
A beautifully written, always intriguing, thoughtful and close observation of a variety of characters, animals, and places, seen from the inside. The plot takes its time as the novelist connects characters, animals, and place, weaving together the natural, spiritual, and supernatural.

Paul D gave it a9:
Strange, very well written and closely observed mixture of the quotidian and the ethereal.

Jim H gave it a9:
There's a cumulative effect to Davis' stripped down, inverted narrative style that will bear fruit for the patient reader. She does not tell a tale so much as swoop in and out of parts of her own jigsawed landscapes-- to tell you about a spider preparing a web, the deepest secrets a character is carrying or a thing that happened here a hundred years ago that may or may not be relevant to the puzzle. Put the pieces all together and it is definitely something you have never seen before. It's as mystical, sensuous, impertinent, as terribly odd and fully worthwhile as dreams, daydreams and life. True lovers of reading, essayez-le!

debby r gave it a7:
quirky, challenging

Robbo the Yobbo gave it an8:
This is the first work of Davis I've read. She's skillful, and I'll be interested to look into her earlier work. I think this book needs some time to settle with the reader - I might give it a "9" next month. I was disappointed slightly by what I thought was a rushed denouement. The characterizations were the work of a master writer, however.

Joe G gave it a10:
a masterpiece

The Thin Place A Novel by Kathryn Davis

The Thin Place
A Novel
by Kathryn Davis