What do You think about Helpless (2007)?
Barbara Gowdy is like a female Canadian Michael Haneke - only a writer not a filmmaker. I always look forward to her books -she has this cool detachment that allows her to talk about seemingly squishy subjects (like the interior lives of elephants in The White Bone) or beauty and child molestation in her latest, Helpless. I gather some reviewers didn't appreciate the subject matter (abduction, child beauty) but I turned the pages like a thriller. One of the few books that could have been longer,fleshed out the characters a wee bit more. Although the abductor and his accomplice - will I ever forget his sweaty, fleshy self? Her tippy-top best? No. Absorbing and well-written? Yes.
—Kyla
What I enjoy most about Barbara Gowdy's work is her willingness to take risks, and her interest and ability in portraying misfits, the disenfranchised, and outcasts of society.This novel's POV alternates between five characters. There's Celia, a single mother, her beautiful nine year old daughter, Rachel, their loyal and generous landlord, Mika, Ron, a nerdy man struggling with pedophilic tendencies, and Ron's quirky and naive girlfriend, Nancy.When Gowdy published this book she was accused of empathizing with pedophiles and as a result was compelled to defend her work. But of course, as a writer, her goal was merely a curiosity and a desire to study this abnormality, all wrapped in a suspenseful story.Following is a snippet of an interview with Gowdy that helps show what she was up to:An Interview with Barbara GowdyHow did you first become interested in the theme of child abduction?I found myself wondering, What is the worst thing that could happen to a person? The answer I came up with was losing a child. Not to death, but actually losing a child, finding yourself faced with the unspeakable fact of her disappearance. So I decided to try to write a novel about that. The challenge became how to make the story readable, how to offer hope to the character of the mother and to pull back on the tension.You have described the book as a suspense novel and also--this might be surprising to some readers--as a 'love story.'Ron, the abductor, is desperately in love, clearly, an unrequited love, a hopeless, illegal love, but it's pure and true in its way.Because of the subject matter, I hesitated in choosing this book to read. But, nothing nasty happens and the result is a real page turner. My only complaint is that the ending seemed to unfold too quickly. Even at 300 pages, I could have gone on for another 200.It's a good read, and job well done!
—Denis
My favourite writer, Timothy Findley was quoted as saying (or writing) that a writer's responsibility is to draw attention to the ills of society. I paraphrase the quote from memory and I have mixed feelings about the quotation itself. For Findley, it was clearly one the driving forces behind his work. Every good book should be shining a light on something negative in this world for it to be a good book but I've read some good books that are the equivalent of a candy bar - they taste good, they go down easy and they're otherwise not all that good for you. And there's nothing wrong with that because people don't always want to be challenged when it comes to reading fiction.It takes a darn courageous writer to wander deep into the reeds where the most vile stories slowly rot, so sick and nasty that nobody wants to dwell on it.Those types of stories are difficult to write for exactly this reason. They are difficult stories to read because they show society at its worst.In Helpless, a beautiful exotic nine-year-old gets abducted by a man who is obsessed with her, convincing himself that he is saving her from a bad situation. That the abductor is one of the point-of-view characters, and his just-under-the-surface obsession is front and center in the story is what makes it uncomfortable. He tells himself that he wants to be a good father figure to this young girl, but he can't keep his eyes off her skin, hair, lips, etc.It's horrible and I felt sick to my stomach reading this book in some parts but it's also a fantastic book because it goes there. These types of things happen and it's all too easy to apply capital punishment or close the bars and walk away but it is much harder to look into the face of the devil and realize that it might be your neighbour, the lady at the nail salon or the guy running the gadget repair shop.I had always heard of Barbara Gowdy but never really knew much about her. I read The Romantic and it was a good and mildly uncomfortable book about another kind of attachment but I always sensed that she never got the kind of respect that the top-tier Canadian writers did.Helpless changed that for me. Gowdy is one of our best.
—Christopher Sword
