LABRADOR

by Kathryn Davis ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 7, 1988

This dazzling first novel, full of mystery, wonder, and ""moral weight,"" chronicles a young woman's passage into adulthood; and Davis' singularly lush and lyrical voice raises familiar themes (sibling rivalry, parental love, adult irrationality) to transcendent heights. The plot, in outline, seems mundane: two sisters, one graceful and popular, the other awkward and a loner, grow up in a rambling New England house, presided over by their difficult, frequently unemployed father and their quiet, unflappable mother. Narrated with hindsight by Kathleen (""Kitty"") Mowbrey, the clumsy younger girl, the story focuses on her sister, Willie, whom Kitty views as the ""source"" of all things--of wisdom, of happiness, of magic. Out of ""colossal apprehension""--not to be confused with original sin--Kitty submits her entire being to the vain and capricious enchantress. Willie first conjures orphanhood, a dark world of make-believe that exploits Kitty's ""uncomplicated and durable love."" With time, Willie's elegance manifests itself in dance, taking her away in her teens to join a ballet company, while Kitty, with her ""faraway-and-wrong-look,"" moons after the impossible, and invents her own fictive voice, Rogni, an abiding angel, full of his own erotic infatuation with Willie. The elusive spirit, first heard by Kitty at age five, has his own tales to tell. And these strange and allegorical stories comment upon, predict, and sometimes substitute for the events at hand, refashioning reality so that the ordinary becomes a matter of foreboding and revelation. In her teens--""young and inhospitable to the facts about her life""--Kitty passes through adolescence with trials by water and fire, nothing like the rather commonplace sexual escapades and teen-age rebellion of her sister. Their long-absent grandfather--a demon of sorts--brings Kitty with him back to Labrador; on this errand into the wilderness, Kitty not only witnesses her grandfather's grisly death, but becomes in the process the heroine of her own story--autonomous, out from the shadow of both Willie: and Rogni. For its elemental poetry and its penetration of the feminine consciousness, this inspired novel breathes with the same sorrow and joy as those other similarly amazing first novels, Joan Chase's During the Reign of the Queen of Persia and Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping.

Pub Date: July 7, 1988

ISBN: 0618075429

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION