Hell: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "SOMETHING IS WRONG IN THE HOUSE..." (more)
Key Phrases: parrot stand, maple bed, maple dresser, Benny Gold, Joy Harbison, Edwina Moss (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This demanding and rewarding third novel by the author of Labrador (Farrar, 1990) and The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf (LJ 6/1/93) will delight all serious readers. Its sensuous prose and vivid rendering of the minutiae of everyday life propel the reader through three haunting tales woven together. They are the stories of two parents and two daughters in 1950s Philadelphia, a dollhouse whose inhabitants are not quite lifeless, and Edwina Moss, a 19th-century chatelaine of domesticity. The Philadelphia family's story is narrated by the elder daughter, who, infatuated with literature, peppers her narrative with sly allusions to Wuthering Heights (shutters banging, wind sweeping across the moors) and A Girl of the Limberlost. Strained marriages, details of housekeeping, anorexic daughters (both human and not), and the mysterious conflation of two paintings of Heaven and of Hell combine to demand rereading. For all collections of literary fiction.?Judith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll., Bronxville, N.Y.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

Davis's writing is so extraordinarily visual that she is practically a video artist: the reader closes the book as if waking from a dream. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books (September 5, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316735051
• ISBN-13: 978-0316735056
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #596,681 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars better than the quoted reviews say, March 16, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Hell: A Novel (Hardcover)

Kathryn Davis' Hell is a magnificent, challenging, dark, challenging book. Melvin Bukheit, in the Washington Post, called it brilliant. The reviews quoted here on line managed to find the only critical review (Kirkus) and to quote the only reservation expressed (in the NYT) at the end of a long, laudatory appreciation of the book. Check it out for yourself!