A Certain Slant of Light

By Cynthia Thayer

Book Overview

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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312261322
• ISBN13: 9780312261320
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.1" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

Characters clash, then blend, in story of hope

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.

Maine Luminescence

Here is a carefully crafted story of pain, loneliness, guilt, growth, healing and redemption as experienced by two very different individuals who are accidentally brought together by the harsh weather of coastal Maine. Peter, a gruff, older man living as a hermit in the country after tragically losing his family in a long ago fire, reluctantly gives refuge to Elaine, a young, gentle, pregnant runaway from the city. Peter and Elaine, with very dissimilar life experiences are torn in different ways by grief and guilt and yet in their brokenness find a way to help each other understand what has happened to each of them. As their unlikely friendship develops, Peter and Elaine sort out their values, learn to put the past in perspective and find the strength to make difficult life choices. Themes of loss, grief and despair are intricately interwoven with change, birth, hope and renewal in a sparse, unpretentious landscape where "that certain slant of light" that yields forgiveness does not occur often or easily. There are no cliches here. Instead, the reader struggles with both Peter and Elaine and the rugged life of rural Maine. The reward is a simple but rich story as satisfying, as unique, and as beautiful as Maine itself.

A test of faith in the lives of two people.

Peter Macqueen has never gotten over the fire that destroyed his wife and two children. So much so that he keeps and plays with a dollhouse, whose figures he pretends are his wife and two children. Each morning, he sets them at the breakfast table. Each evening, he puts them to bed. He is a quiet man, living alone, tortured by the guilt of his memories. One day a lady named Elaine appears, pregnant, having run away from her husband, she needs a place to stay. Peter cannot have her in the house, he simply cannot face a woman's presence in his solitude. He fears Elaine will discover the dollhouse, which he covers with a towel while she is there, and think him mad. What follows is a story of a love that was never meant to be, of a tiny baby that decides the fate of four people, and of the torturous journey towards healing that Peter Macqueen refuses to take. Woven throughout the story is one woman's faith in God, sorely questioned, and one man's lack of faith in anything at all. Wonderfully written, beautifully phrased, this is a story that will touch parts of you forever.

Poignant & Powerful

Both my husband and I agree that is the best novel we've read in a long, long time. From the beginning when we were introduced to Peter, a hermit who keeps a doll house and gently cares for and manipulates the dolls as the replacements for his wife and children that he lost in a fire, up to the bittersweet ending, we were mesmerized. Peter and Elaine, the pregnant, abused young woman he takes in during an ice storm, are memorable characters that live on long after the book has ended. They truly need each other in so many ways, but will they have a future together? You'll have to read this wonderful book to find out & I guarantee that you'll be glad you did.

A lovely novel about Maine, grief, and rebirth

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.