Thayer tugs heart with latest novel

A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT, by Cynthia Thayer, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2000, hardback, 259 pages, $23.95.

Readers looking for an engrossing novel peopled with unusual, yet sympathetic characters will find much to like in Cynthia Thayer’s second novel, “A Certain Slant of Light.”

Living alone in the cabin that was his childhood summer retreat on Maine’s coast, Peter MacQueen isolated himself from his community. His only friend is an elderly Passamaquoddy woman, Dora, who lives on the shore immediately opposite the small island where Peter keeps his sheep.

Peter’s past is revealed gradually, but just a few pages into the first chapter we’re aware that there must have been a shattering trauma in his past: early every morning he sets up a dollhouse and positions the three dolls within. Leslie, the doll who is put in the kitchen to cook breakfast and to call to Peter, Sarah, and Nathaniel; Sarah, whom Peter takes out of her bed and places in the chair opposite Leslie; and Nathaniel, the boy doll that Peter places in the kitchen, standing at the counter. “The whole ritual is a little crazy,” Peter said, “but it’s something he has done every day for years and it is comforting.”

The novel opens with an ice storm, out of which appears a young woman, Elaine, in her eighth month of pregnancy. She begs Peter to take her in and he grudgingly does. At that point the plot takes off. Add a couple more complications: this is Elaine’s second pregnancy; the first, which ended in miscarriage, was the result of a spring night, her sixteen-year-old boyfriend, and a bottle of brandy.

But Elaine is Rh-negative and her husband Rh-positive. If she carries antibodies in her blood as a result of the first pregnancy and if this baby is Rh-positive, it will die. Unless it’s given a transfusion. Another problem: Elaine and her husband are Jehovah’s Witnesses and unalterably opposed to blood transfusions.

So Thayer has set up all the elements of suspense: Will Peter let Elaine stay with him? Will Elaine have a healthy baby? Will Elaine’s husband cause problems? Will Peter and Elaine fall in love? Will Peter ever get up off the floor and go to sleep in his own bed with Elaine? And just what is Peter’s story, anyway? Who are the dolls and why does he move them around in the dollhouse?

Well, the last shall be first. Chapter one reveals a small piece of Peter’s tragedy, the fire that killed his family, Leslie, Sarah, and Nathaniel. The remaining pieces, as well as answers to all the other questions, are revealed over the course of the novel’s 259 pages.

Thayer provided enough dramatic events to keep readers turning pages, including animal and human births, deaths, accidents and conflict. The setting is sharply drawn, making Maine’s seasons and seacoast vivid.

Although Peter’s past is revealed only gradually, we’re never confused, due in part to Thayer’s decision to tell the story in the present tense. The characters’ actions keep with what we know about them, and they never behave in ways that perplex or confound us.

And that is perhaps the novel’s greatest weakness. The thawing of Peter is as predictable and as inevitable as the coming of spring; Elaine dithers and prays, but her decision is never really in question; and the reason for Peter’s chosen isolation wraps everything up in a nice, neat package.

Not that there’s anything wrong with the themes of sin, guilt, and redemption. But one will wish that they weren’t so clearly telegraphed.

Metaphors, too, are as about as unexpected as a sunrise, not only the ice storm as the symbol of Peter’s lack of an emotional life, but also the matter of bagpipes. Before the fire, Peter taught music and played the bagpipes, often in competition. But after losing his family, he put the pipes away. “Playing a piobaireacht [a type of lament],” he said, “requires too much emotion.” So the pipes, like the ice storm, function as a gauge of his spring thaw.

Thayer has a fine sense of creating a credible world through the use of detail, not only of the landscape, but also of activities like sheep-shearing, birthing goats and babies, and composing music. She obviously devotes herself to thorough research.The cumulative effect is a dense and fully created fictional atmosphere.

Above all, “A Certain Slant of Light” is a book about survival and triumph over the worst fate that can befall a parent. In spite of some relatively minor flaws, the novel succeeds as a testament to the strength of the human spirit, the healing power of friendship and love, and the potential for all of us to move beyond despair.

As Emily Dickinson writes, in the poem that provides the novel with its title, “When [seal despair] goes, ’tis like the distance on the look of death”.