Today's Read: Duplex by Kathryn Davis

What would it be like to live a world that was as familiar as 1950s America but was inhabited by both humans and others? Miss Vicks, her neighbors, and her students are navigating through just such a place.

It was a suburban street, one block long, the houses made of brick and built to last like the third little pig's. Sycamore trees had been planted at regular intervals along the curb and the curbs themselves sparkled; I think the concrete was mixed with mica in it. I think when it was new the street couldn't help but draw attention to itself, inviting envy.

—Duplex by Kathryn Davis (Graywolf Press, 2014 [paperback], p. 3)

Quick Facts

• Setting: somewhere between here and there; 1950s to 1960s; suburbia . . . kind of; our world, or maybe not
• Circumstances: life in the future or perhaps the past or maybe in a parallel world; the love story of Mary and Eddie; a snapshot view of a neighborhood
• Characters: Miss Vicks, a fiftyish schoolteacher; her students; her neighbors; her sorcerer ex-lover; Mary and Eddie; robots
• Genre: coming-of-age story, literary science fiction, adult fairy tale, love story, horror, dystopian
• Descriptions from reviews: dreamlike world, dualities and dual planes of existence, blending of real and unreal, breathtaking, surprising, haunting, enchanting
• Why I'm going to give it a try: Although almost every reviewer had a hard time describing the genre and the general story line, almost every one walked away from Duplex totally taken in by Davis's prose and the world she created. Sounds like something unique; I'm not sure why I missed its hardcover release last year. Praised by NPR, most major newspapers and review outlets, and many bloggers