The Romantic: A Novel [Hardcover]

Barbara Gowdy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2003

From the author of The White Bone, a piercing novel of passionate attachment and of the fear and freedom of letting go

Louise Kirk learns about love and loss at an early age. When she is nine years old, her former beauty queen mother disappears, leaving a note that reads only—and incorrectly—“Louise knows how to work the washing machine.” Soon after, the Richters and their adopted son, Abel, move in across the street. Louise’s immediate devotion to the exotic, motherly Mrs. Richter is quickly transferred to her nature-loving, precociously intelligent son.

From this childhood friendship evolves a love that will bind Louise and Abel forever. Though Abel moves away, Louise’s attachment becomes ever more fixed as she grows up. Separations are followed by reunions, but with every turn of their fractured relationship, Louise discovers that Abel cannot love her as fiercely and exclusively as she loves him. Only when she faces another great loss is Louise finally forced to confront the costs of abandoning herself to another.

Skillfully interweaving the stories of Louise and Abel at different ages, Barbara Gowdy produces a powerful exploration of love’s many incarnations: a motherless daughter who yearns to be adopted, a husband eternally linked to a wife who has left him, a girl bewitched by the boy next door, a woman who refuses to let go of a magnetic, elusive man. Haunting and profound, The Romantic is a story about love in all its exquisite variations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her previous novels (The White Bone; Mr. Sandman; etc), Gowdy's imagination blazed new trails, melding bizarre characters into memorable situations. This novel is as beautifully written as its predecessors, but more traditional than the Canadian writer's usual fiction. She examines the mysteries of love and its absence in two damaged children whose adult lives remain shadowed by their early experiences. In the early 1960s in Toronto, when she is 10, narrator Louise Kirk falls in love with a new neighbor boy named Abelard, the adopted son of the Richter family. Louise's mother, a former beauty queen who said things like, "Nobody would believe you're my daughter," abandoned Louise and her passive father a year ago, and Louise prays that the Richters will adopt her, too. Louise has oceans of love to lavish and focuses all her psychic and emotional energy on Abel, who can't bear the weight of it because he is more fragile than she is. She remains obsessed with Abel even after his family moves away, and on the night he briefly reappears, when she is in high school, she conceives his child. But the curious, tender boy she knew has become an alcoholic, taking refuge in Rimbaud and determined to end his life. The narrative moves back and forth in time, spinning out the story of the doomed relationship. Each of the characters, even minor ones, has a unique voice and a vivid, quirky personality. Louise's need to have Abel create the world for her resonates with unfulfilled passion. In reining in her imagination to the limits of a conventional love story, Gowdy has produced her most haunting and sensitive novel to date.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Louise Kirk has loved Abel Richter since they were children, but it was his mother who drew her affection first. At 10, a year after Louise's own mother left her and her father, the Richters, an older couple with an adopted son, move in next door. Louise watches Mrs. Richter longingly from a distance, wishing she would adopt her as well. Louise befriends Abel in order to get to Mrs. Richter, but her love soon transfers to the solitary, sensitive boy. The connection between the two flourishes, and Louise never stops thinking about Abel, even when he moves away. It is his return, when they meet at a high-school party, that marks the beginning of their adult relationship--an attachment Louise thinks will be permanent, especially when she discovers she is pregnant. But her love for Abel blinds her to his failings. Moving seamlessly between Louise's childhood, her teen years, and her present, this novel is a sad, beautiful examination of a lonely woman and her attempts to find unconditional, unwavering love. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805071903
• ISBN-13: 978-0805071900
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,899,960 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful - Heartbreaking - Everything You Could Ask For, June 21, 2003

By 

Caroline P. Hampton (Columbus, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Romantic: A Novel (Hardcover)

This beautiful tale that crosses time and passions is a one of the loveliest books I have read in ages. "The Romantic" by Barbara Gowdy is an amazingly look into the world of Louise Kirk, and her childhood infatuation with neighbor boy, Abel. When Louise's own family leaves her cold and wanting better - she begins a life long fascination and some might say addiction with the Richter family.

Ms. Gowdy's talent is full and complete. I loved her use of tone and romance. Her characters are fully developed - and she handles loss with such grace and talent. I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone. Really amazing read!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!, October 21, 2003

By 

Melanie (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Romantic: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is the first book by Gowdy I've read, and I feel lucky that I happened to find this true literary gem. The characters are ordinary people with ordinary lives, but they are made extraordinary through Gowdy's profound insights, humour, and her obvious ability to give her characters great emotional depth. The two main characters are Louise and Abel, who grew up on the same street in suburban Toronto in the 60s. Both are only children in families that defy the nuclear norm, and as is typical of children, because they are different they are subsequently outcasted from their peer group. Their strong friendship is an oasis for Louise, and Abel lets Louise into his world of exploring the ravine in their neighbourhood. The great dialouge and humour in the book can be illustrated by this passage:

"On our second date, at a French restaurant, I learn that he's an accountant who 'came this close' to being married once. 'It wasn't meant to be,' he says easily. I am warmed by his optimism and by how his eyes soften when we talk about Peter, and yet, by dessert, it's clear that there won't be a third date. 'I can't believe it,' he says after I admit that Peter's tournament was not only the first game of baseball I'd ever sat through, but the first game of sports, period. He says, 'You mean to tell me you never rooted for your high school football team?' He sounds truly puzzled. What I find unbelievable is that the only books he own are "Ask a Handyman" and "The World Almanac of Natural Disasters".

The story's main theme is love, with all of its different forms and all of its dynamics. Parental love is a prominent feature, as Louise's relationship with her mother is analyzed, along with the Richter's parental influence. The cycle of romantic love and all the craziness of it are touched upon, with a message about love's ability to both heal and destroy. Louise seems unable to truly love anyone but Abel, despite that Abel doesn't have the same love for her, and Louise tries to move on with her life without Abel in it by working in menial jobs and dating other men, who she always rejects even when they are delightful, because they are not Abel. It is painful to read her behaving like a idiot, despite that she is clearly intelligent. The self-destructive nature of both Abel and Louise is an interesting commentary on how trauma in our childhood can shape us, and yet at the same time the alcoholic in this novel is not the person with the absent mother who treated her as if she was a dress-up doll, but instead is the artistic individual with adoring parents, lots of talent and opportunity, and a vast array of friends.

I highly recommend this book. The honesty, insights, and wisdom that come from this book are remarkable, and the story is beautifully haunting and touching.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the Best Books In A While, June 15, 2004

By 

"ekl23" (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Romantic: A Novel (Paperback)

It has been a long time since I have been so taken with a novel as I was with Barbara Gowdy's The Romantic. The Romantic tells the tragic love story of Louise and Abel as they grow from two children who live on the same street in a Toronto neighborhood into adults fighting to find their places in the world, and their story could not be told more beautifully. Gowdy's writing reveals all of the quirks and habits of two everyday people that make them unique and wonderful, as well as the things that make them terrible. She brings poignancy to mundane moments, and the story is so well-crafted that it will leave you wanting more, and more, and more, even though the end of the story is revealed on the first page.

The main characters are human, and Gowdy shows them as such. They each have moments of brilliance and moments of failure and many places in between. At the end, you may not agree with them, but it is impossible not to love them like your own friends and family members.

The narrative is from Louise's perspective, and from chapter to chapter she switches from past to present. Some readers may find this jarring, but I found it to be surprisingly cohesive due to Gowdy's skill at bringing the reader back and forth without confusion. The changes in time add to the book's suspense, and with every flash back or forward in time, the reader is left wanting to find out what happened next, reading on more and more urgently to find out.

The Romantic has restored my faith that the art of the novel is still alive and well and living on your local bookstore's shelves. Any serious reader would be hard pressed not to love this book.