Reading Rita Dove`s ”Through the Ivory Gate” is-to borrow a phrase from poet Nikki Giovanni-like eating cotton candy on a rainy day.
That aptly describes the elegant writing of Dove, also a poet, who makes her debut as a novelist with this powerful, poignant book.
Dove has published a collection of short stories and four books of poetry, among them ”Thomas and Beulah,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. In that slim volume, Dove took poetic license in recounting her grandparents` lives and proved herself an accomplished storyteller in love with language.
She continues her love affair with words in ”Ivory Gate” (Pantheon, $21), a finely chiseled novel rich with graceful prose and informed by a poet`s eye for detail.
Set in the mid-`70s, when Afros were in vogue and the Vietnam War wasn`t, ”Ivory Gate” chronicles the struggles of Virginia King, a cellist, puppeteer, mime and aspiring actress in her 20s. The novel stitches together scraps of Virginia`s memories: of her early childhood in Akron; her family`s sudden move to Arizona; her painful affair with a brilliant and confused musician during her Wisconsin college days; her adventurous stint with Puppets and People, an experimental theater troupe.
After the group disbands, Virginia moves back to her Ohio home town for a gig as an artist in residence at a public school. There she introduces the children to the magic of puppetry, and they reintroduce her to long-buried pains from her past: her favorite little-girl doll, Penelope, ”of the creamy skin and dimpling cheeks”; her first black doll, which, to her 9-year-old eyes, looked ”like an overturned crab” with the brown skin, ”the bulging eyes, the painted head”; a white playmate`s racial epithet; her father`s stony silences and her mother`s persistent dissatisfaction.
For Virginia, these bits of memory are at once confusing and illuminating, wrenching and healing.
Like that cotton candy, ”Through the Ivory Gate” goes down easy. It`s delightfully messy and warmly satisfying while you`re consuming it, but it doesn`t stick with you, though it may leave a sweet taste in your mouth and a comforting heaviness in your stomach. For a first novel, that may be just enough.
