A New York Times Notable Book and the winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction, Kathryn Davis's "dazzling first novel" (Kirkus Reviews) "transforms a literary commonplace -- a young girl's transition from childhood to adulthood -- into a brilliantly original story" (Belles Lettres). In LABRADOR, Davis conjures two unforgettable sisters. Willie, the elder, is beautiful and wayward. Kitty, the younger, is a loner whose only means of escaping the bewitching influence of her sister is to follow her grandfather to his home in Labrador, where she cannot avoid confronting the demons that haunt her.
A tale of two sisters and the ambiguous, sometimes destructive ties that bind them, LABRADOR is a tender meditation on love, its joys, its limitations, and its hidden bitterness.
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Kathryn Davis is the recipient of a Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman and the 1999 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters. Davis teaches at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York and lives with her husband and daughter in Vermont.
With extraordinary imagination and language, Labrador marks the debut of an unusual talent. On the surface a novel about the complex relationship between two sisters, it is also a frequently funny and often confounding tale that leaps from angels to demons and from ordinary life in a New Hampshire household to wild and enigmatic fables beyond all time and place. Willie, the older sister, is strikingly beautiful but contrary, and not the least bit sweet. She is a graceful dancer who grows to loathe her family"Mr. Noodle, the Mouse Queen, and Little Kitty." Kitty, a too-tall loner, becomes more and more accustomed to reinventing the world rather than confronting it. Often left at the mercy of the eccentric and superstitious Irish housekeeper, Kitty creates a cast of characters that inhabits her imagination. The feature player is Rogni, a somewhat inept angel, whose stories help Kitty to tune out her father's drinking and her mother's incompetence. When a long-lost grandfather appears, Kitty finds the approval and warmth she has long craved from a blood relation. She is so taken with the old man that she agrees to travel to the far reaches of Labrador, where he lives in primitive style with a woman of whom no one in the family approves. The events that follow, like one of Rogni's fables, are fantastic and bizarre. This is a mysterious, magical book, brimming with haunting images.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Seller: Montclair Book Center, Montclair, NJ, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: USED Very Good. Seller Inventory # 513536
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hardcover. Condition: Fine copy in fine dust jacket. 1st edition. 8vo, 225 pp., Author's first book. Seller Inventory # 065999
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Seller: Book House in Dinkytown, IOBA, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. First UK Edition, signed by author. Bodley Head, 1989; "First published." stated, no later printings indicated; 225pp. Signed by Kathryn Davis on title page, no further inscription. Binding is tight, sturdy, and square; boards and text also very good. Gentle crease to rear flap, else unclipped dust jacket in VG condition, arrives wrapped in protective mylar. Ships same or next business day from Dinkytown in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Signed by Author. Seller Inventory # 312214
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Seller: Mike Murray - Bookseller LLC, East Windsor, NJ, U.S.A.
Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First U.K. Edition/First Printing. This copy has been SIGNED by Kathryn Davis on the title page! "Labrador" is an extraordinary first novel about two sisters: Willie, the elder, is headstrong, beautiful and wayward, and, for Kitty, the younger, the radiant centre around which all things revolve. The author's debut - Winner of Kafka Prize. A story about the bonds that tie sister to sister, "Labrador" is a meditation on love itself, on its limits and its hidden hatreds. Signed by Author(s). Seller Inventory # 7371
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Seller: AwesomeBooks, Wallingford, United Kingdom
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Labrador This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. Seller Inventory # 7719-9780370312415
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Seller: Bahamut Media, Reading, United Kingdom
Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. Seller Inventory # 6545-9780370312415
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