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Helpless (Hardcover)

3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product Details

Hardcover: 307 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805082883
ISBN-13: 978-0805082883
Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 13.7 x 3.3 cm
Shipping Weight: 454 g

Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.ca Sales Rank: #652,432 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

From Publishers Weekly

Love comes up against obsession in Gowdy's seventh novel (following The Romantic), and the results are at times chilling, but not always believable. Single mother Celia works two jobs and is often forced to bring nine-year-old Rachel along to her nighttime gigs at a piano bar. Much to Celia's dismay, men are already drawn to biracial Rachel's exotic beauty, and she reluctantly turns down a lucrative modeling contract for the girl. Yet she's unaware that appliance repairman Ron Clarkson has an unhealthy fascination with Rachel that's escalating. Convinced that Celia is not a worthy parent for Rachel, Ron abducts the girl, soon involving his needy girlfriend, Nancy, and igniting an extensive investigation. Although set in Toronto's urban Cabbagetown neighborhood, the atmosphere feels smalltown insular and relies a bit too much on coincidental acquaintances to feel like a city setting. The kidnap plot is, for Gowdy, surprisingly conventional, but frequent glimpses into the childhoods of Ron, Nancy and Celia add depth, revealing the characters' motivations and inviting contemplation of what constitutes appropriate love toward a child. Ron remains too warped to be remotely sympathetic; more compelling are Nancy's conflicted loyalties and Celia's occasional brutal reflections on the sometimes greedy, possessive love between parent and child—a love not unlike obsession. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Here the imaginative Gowdy (Mister Sandman, 1997) reins in her surrealistic side in the service of a more conventional plot, and the result makes for absorbing reading. Single mother Celia Fox works two jobs but is plagued by money problems; however, she never considers her daughter anything less than a blessing. She still feels a sense of amazement that the beautiful nine-year-old Rachel, who has received the attention of a local modeling agency, is really hers. But then Rachel draws the admiration of Ron, a middle-aged appliance repairman who becomes convinced that her mother is neglecting her. During a blackout, he abducts her and locks her in a room he has constructed just for her, complete with a plasma TV and a custom-made dollhouse. As the police hunt for Rachel intensifies, so do the emotions of the involved parties. Even Gowdy's secondary characters are memorable, especially Celia's kindhearted, intellectual landlord and Ron's vulnerable, ex-addict girlfriend. But her true feat is the sympathetic portrayal of Ron himself, a man who seems painfully unaware of his own dark impulses. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Customer Reviews

2 Reviews

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3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Masterpiece, Jan 28 2008

By	Kevin Thorburn (Halifax, NS Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Helpless (Hardcover)

With a depth of imagery and a remarkable knowledge of human behaviour that is unattainable for most writers, Gowdy presents us with love in various forms - parental, perverse or otherwise - and displays the intensity that can make our most earnest attempts at caring for someone devastating. She clears the darkness and lets us inside places unimaginable, whether we think we want to make the journey or not.

She has clearly done her homework, which would have been extensive and substantial, for this work. Detail and accuracy allow the story to shine. There are no weak characters. All are developed and true, from the primary and secondary to the most minute and even the animals. Her ability to humanize Ron is nothing beyond incredible.

Read this book and bask in Gowdy's achievement.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Half of what could have been a good book, Feb 14 2009

By	Rebecca Swainey (Toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Helpless (Paperback)

I'm generally a fan of Gowdy's books, having read all of them, even her first, Through the Green Valley, which now seems to be permanently out-of-print. I had the same problem with Helpless as I did with her previous novel, The Romantic. It simply doesn't feel like a whole book. I finished it with a sense of "ok, so where's the rest of it?" She seemed to get frightened of where the plot was going so rushed to end the novel just at the moment when it was beginning to seem believable.

I have a feeling that if she'd waited a few years to allow some distance and to let the ideas in the book stew in her mind for a while she would have produced a much better novel. Her older books have an unblinking honesty that in comparision just make this book feel even more like a cop out. She wanted to explore the idea of pedophilia, morality and the lines society creates and breaks but then she appears to be too afraid of the subject matter to write it honestly. In interviews she's cited examples of people like Lewis Carroll, who might have had a thing for little girls but never actually acted on his feelings, as a way of attempting to explain Ron, but it just doesn't fly: Ron loses his battle the moment he abducts Rachel. If she had written honestly from that point on it would have been pretty horrific. I can understand her reluctance to tackle the subject truthfully, because really how many people are comfortable reading a book full of graphic descriptions of molestation let alone writing one?

In trying to humanize Ron she includes an explanation for the origins of Ron's pedophilia, which borrows rather shamelessly from Lolita (Humbert and his first love as a teenager). Ron's back story seems false somehow too, possibly because if she'd been writing honestly she'd have had to admit that most pedophiles simply don't know why they are the way they are, there is no explanation for it.
The entire effort falls flat because she simply can't find a believable way to explain how Ron miraculously finds the strength to keep his hands off the novel's young heroine.

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