Customer Reviews

Duchess of Nothing: A Novel

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I came to Amazon to order a copy of this book for a friend of mine and was so dismayed by the reviews, I felt compelled to write one myself. First, a brief synopsis if you haven't read it elsewhere: The story is narrarated by a woman who is living in Rome with a man named Edmund and his 7yr old half brother who was recently deposited there by their father. The woman is never named and the boy only referred to as "Edmund's brother". Soon, Edmund himself leaves and the story follows the narrator and her relationship to the boy to whom she becomes a dubious caretaker. The book is not exactly plot-driven, rather the story moved forward through the ruminations of the unnamed woman who sees herself as a sort of reluctant but necessary educator. The boy is bright and endearing...my inner child therapist was very worried about his inevitable abandonment and co-dependency issues. The facinating part of the book for me was narrator's constant fluctuation between confidence and feelings of failure. Was the "potential" with which she was labeled in her youth misspent or mistaken altogether? Her musings and tirades were often funny and even profound, if competely out of touch with reality and I felt sympathy for her flounderings and liked her immensely. The general pace of the book is slow which I thought was cool because, in a sense, it underscored the lazy and ambiguous lifestyle of the narrarator. Most of the action is all in her head and she never really commits to anything. However, for the final quarter of the book I found this to be a bit overdone and think it could have benefited from a bit more editing. I can see that if read from a completely literal point of view, the narrator would indeed seem like a narcissistic, self absorbed, petty, snobby, deluded and generally terrible human being and it would be difficult to overcome the sense of horror in reading along while a small child is being left in her care. I think if the story were told from boy's perspective, you'd have a tale similar to Augusten Burroughs "Running with Scissors" although you'd enjoy it with less guilt since it didn't actually happen. As it is, while the mom in me cringed, the languishing milk-boiler was stirred.

I loved this novel. The voice of the narrarator was intoxicating, quite funny, and mercilessly dark. I laughed out loud a few times, but nervously. I found myself even liking the woman who was speaking and then shortly thereafter being appalled that I thought she might actually be likable or even sane. Complications like these that set up a conflict in the reader make for a reading experience that is a genuinely complex and prickly one. I think the closest comparison I can make to reading The Duchess of Nothing would be to reading the best of Thomas Bernhard's novels that are similarly inspired obsessive monologues bordering on insanity (the good kind). Both of Heather McGowan's novels (*Schooling* --her first-- also brilliant and troubling) will sit next to all of Mr. Bernhard's on my shelves. Highly recommended.

One of the worst books I have ever read. Read a glowing review. BAH.

Main character not likeable. Nothing good about this book. Did not finish.

The unnamed narrator of Heather McGowan's individualist novel Duchess of Nothing is haunted by her past and seems to ache for some kind of attention. As the novel opens, the "Duchess" of the title is living in an apartment in Rome, with her lover Edmund and Edmund's seven-year-old younger brother.

She spends her days drifting lazily throughout her residence in a type of existential torment, talking to Edmund's younger brother, promising to unconventionally educate him and perhaps show him around the City. Her ambiguous relationship with Edmund - a less than intelligent artist - is at once self-evident; at one stage, she even contemplates leaving him.

But it is Edmund that eventually departs, telling her that he is off to visit his mother. He leaves enough money for her take care of his brother for a few weeks, even though it is clear that she is not the best guardian - she feeds the boy by boiling bowls of milk in the morning and "mushy brown things that soak up lots of sources," at night and in one instance, even gives him scotch to dull the pain from a splinter.

As long as she is responsible for Edmund's brother's education, the boy will know the truth about things, however dark the truth may be. As she chain-smokes, she begins to tell him of a time when life held great promise for her. She once worked as a bank-teller, where one spring day her husband walked into the bank "in a small felt cap," and chose her because he thought she was the best of the bank tellers.

He withdrew her - just like the cash - and bought her to a compound on a distant hill where he methodically began to drive her mad. Of course, it was a terrible mistake, yet she refuses to take the blame for their failure as a couple, "he married me and I began to decompose; and at the wedding she predicted the whole affair would end horribly." Stultified and dying, she forced herself to make a break for it and head to the Alps.

As she steadily reviews her life and the events that bought her to a piazza in Rome, "with a strange boy who spends hours building cities on the carpet," the author begins to paint a compelling portrait of a sad, bitter and emotionally dependent woman who is constantly living on the edge.

Although she feigns control, it is actually Edmund's brother who is the more sensible - he wants to spend their remaining money on milk and bread, but she wants to splurge on a glamorous hat. They argue and bicker, and she lectures him about the perils of love, life and the universe, and although there is some resentment, it is clear that they have connected on a deeper level. To him, she can often be an "ugly yellow soul," to her; he's a short man in boys' sandals, "a comrade in the deliberation of our journey together in life."

The Duchess of Nothing is a difficult book, the story told in an endless stream-of consciousness style, a type of expressive and dark interior confessional that is at once, funny and sorrowful. The prose is fluid and lyrical, with McGowan framing her complex themes of loneness and isolation with great fervor, a delicate touch and deft precision.

Stuck in her cynical and distrustful world, the narrator is constantly belittling herself, lamenting that she might never recapture the glory of that young girl in her bank days. She's also guarding herself against betrayal, against beauty and against love. It is as though she's mired in a type of proto-feminist angst, with only a seven-year-old boy for company, and it quickly becomes clear that she's been caught up in the giant swell of life, where many of her choices, have unfortunately, never really belonged to her. Mike Leonard May 06.

This is the worst book I've read in a very long time. The narrator is unbearable and acts like a stupid child during the whole book. The writer tries to be smart and funny, but the result is just extremely boring. I forced myself to read half of the book and just couldn't finish it in spite of my best efforts.