Books for Christmas - John Lawton

And now it's the Christmas pick of John Lawton, author of the excellent (because I think so) Frederick Troy novels:

* * * * *

Helpless by Barbara Gowdy.

"Go on, name me half a dozen Canadian writers ... Peggy Atwood (of course) ... Mordecai Richler (that's going back a bit), Stephen Leacock (that's going back even further), Michael Ondaatje (OK ... he lives there, but actually he's from ....) that bloke who wrote a whopper about Newfoundland but nobody remembers his name ... Wayne? .... and Barbara Gowdy.

You might say 'who?' I doubt she's much noticed in the UK, although all but a couple of her books are in print here. Gowdy never does the same thing twice. In that sense, she's Canada's TC Boyle. She's also TC in the sense that while crime is often a vital part of her work, you'd never call her a crime writer. Helpless (2007) deals with a crime that has tabloid currency – child abduction. She deals with it from the point of view of the mother, the girl and ... the kidnappers. It would have been so easy to get this wrong .... to have been campaigning, and reduce the novel to a medium for the campaign, to have been sentimental ... or just grotesque. Gowdy does none of these things. It's a compelling, hugely intelligent read. And when you've read that seek out her "We So Seldom Look On Love" from about twenty years ago."

Comments

[Janet]

And of course her classic, The White Bone, which deals with another kind of crime, the slow eradication of African elephants by poachers and humans bent on destroying the planet by other nefarious means like development, climate change, etc. This novel's depiction of these amazing creatures and the familial bonds they form is based on Gowdy's in-depth research and great writing talent.