The Romantic
Barbara Gowdy Flamingo, 372pp, £15.99
ISBN 0007156278
Barbara Gowdy's speciality is dysfunctional families. That might not sound too promising, given that unhappy families, contrary to Tolstoy's oft-quoted assertion, are all alike, but this Canadian writer is gifted with a deliciously black wit, and an ear for the quirks and tics of the unconventional. Having encompassed not only Siamese twins, transsexuals, necrophiliacs and elephants in her previous novels, she seems to be on more traditional ground in The Romantic, an examination of the mysteries of love between two damaged children.
Louise is the only daughter of a beauty queen, married to a weak, kindly father in early 1960s Toronto. Her mother, a splendidly caustic character who treats her daughter as a cross between Cinderella and a Mini-Me, leaves home when Louise is ten. Shortly afterwards, the Richters move in with their adopted son Abelard, or Abel. Louise longs to be adopted by Mrs Richter, despite local suspicion that the couple are ex-Nazis, but her passion is soon transferred to Abel. At the start of the novel, which moves back and forth over time, we are told that this passion is doomed because Abel will become an alcoholic and die young. It is his presence, and frequent absence, in Louise's life that gives the book its Gowdyesque tone of melancholy, shot through with black humour.
Unsurprisingly, Abel and Louise both grow up into the pain and mess of adulthood without finding much succour on the way. Parted by fate, character, geography and misunderstandings, they compare themselves to Abelard and Eloise (or "Hell-Louise", as our narrator is pleasingly stroppy at times), but there are biblical undertones, too. Abel is one of life's sufferers, more concerned at the possibility of World War III than his frequent victimisation by the school bully. "Fatally enlightened", as Louise perceives, he loves insects, bats, toads, poetry and music and she absorbs these obsessions with all the intensity and impressionability of young love. He moves away, but when he revisits for a party as a teenager, they make love and she becomes pregnant. On flying to Ottawa to see him in secret, she discovers him kissing another girl in a bar, and aborts their baby, letting him know this in a parody of a Rimbaud poem they both love.
Whether it is this that turns him into an alcoholic, or the tender-hearted hopelessness that causes them both to try to rescue moths from light bulbs, Louise cannot tell. Part of The Romantic is a meditation on what causes alcoholism, and whether Abel should be seen as a Christlike figure who believes that "when I'm in pain, somebody else isn't". Unfortunately, Louise decides not to apply for university, which might equip her to shoot down this fallacious argument. Abel castigates her for "laxity of perception", but the reader is more irritated by her laxity of logic.
Gowdy's compassion lights up even her most minor characters, such as Louise's first employer, but no amount of fine writing can prevent one from finding this type of Romanticism increasingly absurd. Real goodness does not consist of doing nothing for fear of choosing one person over another; it is not passive, but proactive. Carol Shields chose the same theme of passive goodness for Unless, another maddening novel. You like Louise almost despite herself, and pity her "twilight life", working as a secretary to old men, rejecting the unconditional love of a delightful man and generally behaving like a silly young twit. There are too many such women knocking about the world, and perhaps they have a place in fiction. However, one cannot feel too sorry for them, even when described by an author as talented, witty and thoughtful as Gowdy.
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