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


Book Description
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.



About the Author
Barbara Gowdy is the author of six previous books, including The White Bone (Picador 0-312-26412-7), Mister Sandman, and We So Seldom Look on Love. Recipient of the prestigious Marian Engel Award, she lives in Toronto, Ontario.



Excerpted from The Romantic: A Novel by Barbara Gowdy. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From The Romantic:

I fall in love with Mrs. Richter immediately, Abel the following summer. I know how unlikely it sounds, a ten-year-old girl falling in love at all, let alone with a middle-age woman. But to say I become infatuated doesn’t describe the gravity and voluptuousness of my feelings. I trail after her to the grocery store and touch the grapefruits she has fondled. I gaze at her flannel nightgown billowing on the clothesline and am uplifted, as if by music. Under the pretext of welcoming her to the subdivision or asking if she gives piano lessons, asking if she heard about the white-elephant sale at church—any excuse—I write letters advertising my availability and qualifications as a daughter. “Lend a Helping Hand!” I write on the back of the envelopes, as if this were my motto. Down the margins I draw pictures of a girl doing the dishes, scrubbing the floor, dusting.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"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 for the rest of their lives. 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 she cannot get Abel to love her as fiercely and exclusively as she loves him. Only when Louise comes face to face with another great loss is she finally forced to confront the costs of abandoning herself to another.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

By resisting the bossy tug of plot, Gowdy finds plenty of time to notice those unimportant-to-the-world details that make her writing so lovely. Louise's descriptions of her feelings for Abel are carefully constructed and, at times, flat-out beautiful: ''I imagine holding my hand a few inches above a boulder. It's twilight, summer, growing cool. The boulder gives off the heat of the day. My love for Abel is like the heat between the boulder and the falling night.'' Gowdy has found a perfect vehicle for her peculiar talents. Louise remains faithful to her totally doomed childhood love. She might be crazy, she might be exceptionally sane. Gowdy is too fine a writer to tell us. — Claire Dederer

The Los Angeles Times

Gowdy's clear-eyed narration gives readers insight into the difficult and extraordinary challenge of surviving maternal abandonment. She presents Louise's needs as bald and raw, and in so doing, the unbearable pain of Louise's dilemma resonates deeply in readers.

Though obsessive love and romantic desire serve as the story's framework, the tale's foundation is built solidly on the rupture suffered by this child and the way her intense yearning shapes her world. At the heart of The Romantic are questions about loss and love that are, in many ways, unanswerable and anything but romantic. — Bernadette Murphy

The Washington Post

Gowdy's writing, at its best, reminds those lucky enough to have fallen ecstatically in love how it can feel like religious conversion. — Jane Vandenburgh

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. Author tour. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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