Since reading The Thin Place in 2006, I have been waiting for the next novel from Kathryn Davis. The wait has lasted more than seven years – but now everyone can read Duplex, published recently by Graywolf Press (with dust jacket again based on a painting by famous hyper-realist of the seashore, Bo Bartlett).
"If it wasn't possible to reinvent the past in such ways as to make it conform to the present's cheerful view of the way things ought to have been, why bother living?"
Whenever I have been asked to give a definition of the word "sentimental" my answers have been vague and unsatisfactory. It is like the word "fascist" – carrying a clear mental meaning that is yet difficult to articulate clearly. Now, thanks to Kathryn Davis, I have come into possession of the sentence quoted in bold above, and I will keep it on a little slip of paper (like a cookie fortune) and pull it out the next time somebody wants to know what I mean by the word "sentimental."