Grandparent and child--Fiction

Kate Zeller is nearly thirteen, with hair like a rat’s nest and the temperament of a dog chained up against its will: moody and likely to bite you. She lives in the small town of Brookford with her twenty-two year old brother Teddy and her grandfather, Tony, an acclaimed graphic novelist. As summer turns to autumn, two things barrel uninvited into Kate’s life: one is Raleigh, a strange new girl with a head full of Shakespeare and a secret knowledge of ghosts. The other is the Alzheimer’s that sneaks itself into her
grandfather’s head and begins to steal it away, piece by piece. The history and tragedy of the Zeller family begins to unwind as reality blurs with fantasy, creator with creations, all being watched by a man who lives deep in the forest that connects Kate’s house to Raleigh’s. A man with eyes that tick.

Thatch Loop is a novel written in the modernist tradition of experimentation with form and point of view. The novel allows multiple points of view. This allows the reader the chance to view multiple realities as well as know the inner life and motives of each character. Also, this experimentation with point of view creates psychic space in what could otherwise be a cloistered and claustrophobic environment. The story ultimately belongs to Rachel Collier. Her character develops during three summers in the mid 1980s when she is visiting her grandparents. Her visits end abruptly during the summer of 1986, her grandmother dies, and her parents forbid her return to Thatch. These scenes are intermingled with a time period of a few days in 1991 when she and her father, Emerson, return to Thatch for a funeral. Rachel also seeks to reestablish a relationship with her childhood summertime sweetheart.