Helpless - Barbara Gowdy

The jacket blurb for Helpless has a quote from Carol Shields - 'She writes like an angel' - that I have to agree with. Gowdy's writing cannot be faulted. She is firmly in control of her tools and there is not one moment in Helpless that isn't well written. There is an elusive quality to her style that draws the reader in to the story. Helpless only has two settings yet it feels like a complete world. The main characters - Celia, her daughter Rachel, and the abductors of Rachel, Ron and Nancy - are all fully realised. The dialogue never sounds false. All these elements add up to a enormously competent piece of writing...

But.

Helpless, and Gowdy's last couple of novels, have veered so close to greatness that the fact they don't quite make it is disappointing. Plotting is Gowdy's weakness. As I reached the last ten pages of Helpless I thought she had managed to (at last) complete a novel without leaving me with a feeling of being letdown. Alas, not. The ending is rushed, makes no sense and undermines the rest of the novel. Given the subject matter - the abduction of a young child - and the manner in which Gowdy manages to elicit sympathy (of a sort) for even the vilest of her characters, it is frustrating that she loses her nerve at the very end.

Boys On The Side

Boys On The Side is a movie I've probably watched a dozen times since it's mid-90s release. I watched it again last weekend and enjoyed it as much as ever. I have been thinking about why I like it so much. It's not a complex story that reveals additional layers on repeated viewings and it's not an 'epic' that sweeps you along. In fact, it's the antithesis of both those sorts of movies. It starts out as a road trip...then it morphs into a courtroom drama...then veers ever so close to disease-of-the-week territory...before correcting course and becoming an unusual love story. I think that what makes it so appealing to me is the core idea of making a family out of those people around you, those people who love you but aren't your biological family. The movie shows a path away from the sense of alienation and isolation that many people feel. That's something we can all relate to.

It occurred to me while watching Boys On The Side that it has a similar theme to another girls-only flick that I've also watched quite a few times. Leaving Normal is a fairly obscure film that deserves a bigger audience. It was released in 1992 and has stuck in my mind ever since. I haven't seen it in a few years because it's hard to get hold of (from what I can gather it's still not available on DVD). It's another story of misfits who come together to make a life together. It's a love story in the same way that Boys On The Side is. Love between friends comes to mean as much as the love between 'real' family.

The triumph of love - any sort of love - over disillusionment and loneliness is something I find inspiring. I wish there were more movies like Boys On The Side and Leaving Normal. And I wish there were movies like these that were about men finding some sort of platonic solace in the company of each other. Perhaps there are and I just don't know about them...

The 33% Rule

Recently over at SF Signal there has been discussion about how much of a book you should read before deciding it's no good. This has resulted in the 33% Rule. Basically, if the book hasn't grabbed you by the balls and given them a good shaking by a third of the way through it's a dud and not worth pursuing.

If I had to guess, out of the 30 years or so that I've been a reader, I have probably only deliberately not finished less than half a dozen books. There have been plenty of books that I wanted to stop but out of some sort of perverse self-torture I've always forced myself to finish them.

Lately I'm feeling less inclined to devote the time to a book that I'm just not enjoying. Case in point: The Princess Bride by William Goldman. I really, really, really wanted to throw it against a wall. It took me forever to read. If it wasn't required reading for one of my subjects this semester I wouldn't have finished it. I hated it and every page was a real chore to finish.

That was the last straw for me. I've decided there's not enough time left in my life to give to uninteresting books. I'm adopting the 33% Rule as of The Ruins, which I started last night. It's not the sort of book - a mystery/thriller - that I read very often so I figure it's a good book to start with. It's only 319 pages so I'll decide at page 106 if I'm going to continue with it. I only managed 40 pages last night and I have to say it's a 50/50 proposition at the moment. I'm liking it but not loving it.

I don't really expect the adoption of the 33% Rule to radically change my reading. The vast majority of books I read are entertaining enough that I can't imagine chucking them in. The only difference now will be that I can give up on a book guilt-free. Strange, I know...