Cobwebwalking

So delicate and magically sentient a creature is the tiny adolescent girl Morgan, the central character of this first novel that has much in common with fairy tales, that she can walk on cobwebs and smell, hear, see and feel what no one else can. Indeed, she can hear the Fairy Queen speaking to her and she can hear Silence. The perfection of her life is shattered when her adored father remarries and produces a sibling-rival, a bitterly resented half-sister. Her purity tarnished by vile sentimentsresentment, jealousyMorgan considers abandoning the three of them to their fate in a fall-out shelter when The Bomb falls; but in the end she rediscovers her special relation to the natural world and with it her newfound, overriding love for her family. Again she and the ""whole world'' have become one, but she alone in creation can walk on moonbeams. The final scene is wonderfully ablaze with mystic fire, as the sisters dance wildly in the moonlight. On the way to that moment, however, the fable often treads a cobweb-fine line this side of bathosstet, tottering dangerously at times. (September 10)