No, not the Neil Young song that’s part of my soundtrack, but Barbara Gowdy’s latest novel. I devoured Helpless (which could have been in one sitting if that necessary evil called “work” hadn’t gotten in the way) in just over 24 hours, somewhat echoing the breakneck pace of the police on the hunt for a missing child, which forms the central storyline of the novel.
Rachel, the uncommonly beautiful daughter of Celia, a single mom who plays piano and works in a video store, is taken during a blackout. The man who whisks her away in the night, Ron, is an overweight, hapless mechanic who works on small motors. He sees Rachel by chance one day and falls deeply in love with her. Nancy, Ron’s girlfriend, a former crystal meth addict with a spasming leg, becomes his reluctant accomplice as they hold Rachel in his basement for an extended amount of time.
Gowdy portrays all of the characters brilliantly, from the angelic and even mystical voice of Rachel herself, to the deeply troubled and supremely frightening man who loves her enough to silent her away in the night, the novel is both suspenseful and terrifying at the same time.
I don’t know if I’ll ever fall as much in love with Gowdy’s work as I did when I finished The Romantic, a book whose characters stay with me and that I still recommend to people to this day. But I did enjoy Helpless thoroughly, and think that she has such a lovely way of approaching subjects that might be too hard for other writers to put their heads into, like Ron. Gowdy manages to get so deep into him where regardless of how wrong his (for lack of a better term) impure thoughts are, you still feel sympathetic.
I hate to compare Gowdy’s lovely written book to the film Happiness but it kept coming to the top of my mind as I was reading yesterday. I kept hoping for Ron to redeem himself because I couldn’t endure the crushing weight of the worst in human kind as that film demonstrates. Thankfully, the novel is richer and softer at the same time than Solondz’s film. In a way, it’s like comparing apples to oranges, where Helpless explores the mind of a pedophile on the verge of betraying everything he knows to be right, Happiness simply wants to squeeze you with the violence and betrayal of the molester’s actions. It’s an interesting distinction.
Annnywaaay. This book broke my heart in so many different places, not the least of which was the mother Celia, who while listening to the police around her talk about the mundane details of their private lives, “…reflects without resentment or envy—it’s simply a stray thought—that these are people whose lives have never hung, as hers does, by the thread of a single human attachment.”
And I thought, quite simply, that I am the luckiest girl in the world to be surrounded at all times by more than one person, if I were to go missing, that would miss and/or worry about me. I have entire spools of human attachments that may come unraveled from time to time but never go missing entirely. I don’t want to give away any of the novel, so forgive me if even this is too much detail, for the pacing and the thrill of it all is really the book’s core power, so that’s all I’m going to say…
You know that pile of books I said I was (happily) “drowning in?”
Just added this one to the pile.
Girl, if you went missing I’d hunt ya down ma damn self.
I am so glad that this book is good. I really have liked Gowdy’s other books. I almost bought it the other day, but I am cheap and Amazon is cheaper than Coles…
Um – I’m sold… got an extra copy kicking around?
I’m going to read this next.
D: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Helpless. I wrote about it in my own blog, but all I could come up with was “You really should read this. I cried most of the way through it.”
Since then, I’ve just gobbled down Gowdy’s Mister Sandman, which astounded me with its inventiveness.
Sorry if I startle you, a stranger just showing up like this. I stumbled onto your blog today, but you and I were in a class together once, taught by Ken Babstock at UofT.
Best,
Shawn