A Certain Slant of Light [Paperback]

Cynthia Thayer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 9, 2001

At the heart of Cynthia Thayer's debut novel, Strong for Potatoes, was the tender relationship between a girl and her grandfather, constantly evolving as their lives grew and changed. Now, in Thayer's second novel, she tackles another kind of relationship, one between strangers.

Peter lost his wife and children in a fire years ago, yet the wounds are still as fresh as if it happened yesterday. He's turned into something of a hermit in a cabin on the coast of Maine, shearing sheep and gardening to live, an old Passamaquoddy woman his only friend. Elaine is eight months pregnant and on the run from her husband, a hard man more interested in control than love. Fear is simply a part of her life, fear for herself and her unborn child.

When Elaine turns up outside Peter's cabin during one of Maine's worst winter storms in years, Peter can't turn her away into the ice. Holed up together in his one-room home, the two troubled, lonely adults clash, then slowly discover that friendship, support, and healing can come in the most unlikely places.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A hermit opens his heart to love in Thayer's moving second novel (after Strong for Potatoes), which takes its title from a poem by Emily Dickinson. When a fire kills his wife, son and daughter, Peter MacQueen retreats to his coastal cabin in Maine, interacting with nobody except Dora, an old Passamaquoddy Indian, and his faithful pet, Dog. He also finds solace in his bagpipes, his few books and a mournful ritual involving his dead daughter's dollhouse, but a guilty secret relentlessly haunts him. A pregnant woman, Elaine, on the run from her cruel husband, shows up on his property, desperate for shelter from a winter storm; the two share a bittersweet healing. Initially irritated by Elaine's presence, Peter eventually opens a tentative crack in his emotional door. Elaine tells him about the miscarriage she suffered when she was a teenager and about the excruciating tensions of growing up with healthy hormones in a restrictive Jehovah's Witness environment. After Elaine's daughter is born and named AzelinA"Spared by Jehovah"A Elaine must decide whether to stay or return to her husband. Thayer's tale is deeply poetic and quasi-Freudian, with the dollhouse in Peter's cabin serving as a potent symbol of the characters' unconscious desires. The other central motif is Elaine's pregnancy: ideas of renewal, fear and sacrifice in bringing forth new life come to the surface when it becomes clear that Azelin may need a blood transfusion, which Elaine's religion prohibits. If Thayer is heavy-handed with such themes, her characters are plainspoken and lucid as well as complex, and their progress toward emotional healing becomes an engrossing story with inspirational power. Agent, Sandy Choron. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Thayer!s (Strong for Potatoes) second novel treats the unusual relationship between an aging, socially withdrawn man and a young, pregnant woman. Peter has lived a hermitlike existence in his cabin on the Maine coast for years since his wife and children died in a house fire. His only companions are an old dog and Dora, an elderly Native American woman who lives in a nearby cabin. Elaine, who appears at Peter!s cabin during an ice storm, has deliberately sought his place as a refuge while she make decisions about her life and baby, who may require a blood transfusion at birth, a procedure forbidden by her Jehovah!s Witnesses sect. Peter is at first angry at the imposition of a needy stranger, but he gradually comes to rely on Elaine!s companionship and help with his animals and garden. He finds himself opening up to the world again, falling in love, and resolving his guilt over his family!s death. Dora, a former midwife, assists with Elaine!s delivery, while Elaine!s husband, the book!s only two-dimensional character, provides a threatening presence. Thayer!s knowledge of gardening, sheepherding, and even bagpipes (Peter!s avocation) enriches the story, and the uncertainty of Peter and Elaine!s future together keeps the pages turning. Highly recommended."Reba Leiding, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (July 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312275641
• ISBN-13: 978-0312275648
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,583,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Characters clash, then blend, in story of hope, July 26, 2001

By 

Gwyneth Calvetti (West Salem, WI United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Certain Slant of Light (Hardcover)

Peter lives a solitary life along the rural Maine coast; Elaine, eight months pregnant, comes into his life in the midst of a terrible ice storm, seeking a solitude of her own in which to sort out her life. In this beautifully crafted novel, the secrets each carries are revealed early in the plot. It is to see how Peter and Elaine each come to terms with their own secrets that keeps one reading.

Peter has spent the last twenty years living in guilt for the loss of his family to a fire while he was away at a bagpipe championship. Winning the national prize was no comfort for him upon learning that his whole family perished in the blaze, and so, he retreats to his lonely existence at a family cottage, never playing the pipes again.

Elaine crashes into his quiet and well ordered life, refusing to be moved from her spot. She too, has demons with which she must wrestle, but hers are spiritual. Her religion does not allow transfusions, and because of a youthful transgression, she may have a baby with Rh postive blood. Peter, with much trepidation, allows her to settle in to find the answers she needs to her problems. Her baby is born, and their life takes on a new type of ordinariness, cadenced by the daily rhythms of milking, planting, cooking and tending to the flocks. As Peter comes to enjoy her presence, he also comes to realize that his past is passed, and he needs to come to terms with that, too.

This quiet story glows with the depth of the characters and their thoughts, and the reader, through the author's ability to evoke a sense of place, can feel and smell the barns, the rhubarb pie cooking, can hear the quiet night sounds of the cabin and the plantive singing of Elaine or Peter finally playing his pipes again. The story moves along, much like life itself, through normal days, dramatic events, quiet epiphanies and endings that are hopeful, but not Hollywood.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lovely novel about Maine, grief, and rebirth, July 30, 2000

By 

mtk (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Certain Slant of Light (Hardcover)

I liked this novel better than her first one (Strong For Potatoes) because it seemed utterly realistic and utterly engaging. It's a novel of hope, of rebirth, and of grief and loss--all those wonderful subjects so often done--yet because it is set in the Maine woods next to the sea and because Cynthia Thayer knows so much about farming, bagpiping, midwifery, and sheep raising and even the Jehovah Witnesses, she takes what might be cliches and gives them new life. I read it in a day. One of her best characters is Dog, later to be called Seamus, who fetches a log of wood upon command each morning and who howls if he is not called upon to do this task. Then there is Alice the horse who will kick out the barn wall if her needs are not tended to exactly at the right moment. The human characters are wonderfully real too, and the title, drawn from Emily Dickinson's poem about grief and grieving, makes complete sense in a way that her first novel's title did not.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Silas Marner revisited, October 6, 2002

By 

Erik D. Jens (Bainbridge Island, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Certain Slant of Light (Paperback)

This tale is a modernized, closely observed retelling of George Eliot's Silas Marner: a once-naive young man, devastated by loss and betrayal, spends 15 years as a recluse in a rural society before finding--perhaps--redemption when a lost soul shows up on his doorstep. In Thayer's version (and she doesn't mention George Eliot in her foreword, somewhat to my surprise), it's a neighbor who's the weaver, and the baby is yet-unborn when its mother arrives on a winter's day on the hermit's doorstep. (I read Silas Marner as soon as I'd finished Certain Slant of Light, having recognized the plot and characters from Steve Martin's movie version of Silas Marner, A Simple Twist of Fate). Unlike some other reviewers here, I found the Jehovah's Witnesses in Thayer's retelling--particularly the husband--wholly backwards, stifled, misogynistic, and in all ways despicable, and the girl's decision in Thayer's tale left me feeling depressed, cheated, and disgusted. Thayer makes a vital plot point out of the girl's adamant decision as a J.W. not to allow a blood tranfusion for her child should it be born with a condition requiring such a tranfusion to survive. I found Thayer's resolution of this "plot complication" ethically and dramatically bankrupt. Thayer writes beautifully and evocatively, and I'll read whatever she writes next, but this particular book just wasn't to my taste (which may say more about me than the book, since a dear friend of excellent taste cites this as her favorite book). Happy reading to all...