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Saturday, July 19, 2008

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When to walk away from reading this

Harsh, but Rebecca Gower’s debut novel is a tedious portrayal of nursing post-breakup wounds

By Caralyn Green
Published: October 1st, 2007 | 1:41pm

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Heroines usually succeed at being relatable when they’re flawed — a little awkward insecurity never fails to endear a reader. After all, no one likes a know-it-all with perfect hair and well-played witticisms. But there is a line one mustn’t cross, isn’t there? Your heroine can be deeply deficient as long as her shortcomings are funny, or at least poignant or ironic or something. That’s where Rebecca Gowers fails.

Ramble, the narrator of Gowers’ debut novel, When to Walk, is exceptionally tragic — half deaf, nearly half crippled, abandoned by her musician husband, broke, virtually friendless, partially reclusive, and obsessed to an irritating degree with lengthy ruminations on etymology and family history. While these elements all have the potential to be fascinating, Ramble essentially fails to enter a literary arena that is thought-through amusing. Ramble lacks a mentality that could be considered wry, silly, inspirational or remarkable for something other than her insipid, introverted, über-British stuffiness.

After Ramble’s husband dumps her on a Saturday afternoon by calling her an “autistic vampire,” Ramble spends the week sulking over a freelance-article deadline and drinking lots of coffee with milk (but eating nothing except bread and butter, stale Christmas shortbread, and painkillers). There’s also some stuff about Ramble’s batty ex–anti-Semitic grandmother and her gay best friend–cousin, with whom she ends up sleeping in the book’s one unnerving turn of events.

Queer, incestuous sex aside, nothing much happens in When to Walk. And all of this non-happening is sequestered into stumps of prose that jerk, transition-free, from one desolate action to the next. Ramble drinks coffee. Ramble limps to the mini-mart and library. Ramble limps home to her rented walkup. Ramble gets drunk off of one beer. Ramble is alone but not lonely. Ramble hesitates to bond with her petty thief neighbor Mrs. Shaw, a lady with garish high heels and a cockney accent. Ramble drinks more coffee. Ramble’s convinced her husband has run off with Mr. Shaw to become a petty thief-in-training. Ramble watches toe-less pigeons, and thinks a lot about Victorian England and her grandfather, a piano tuner with unkempt hair. Ramble drinks more coffee. Ramble finds a sliver of confidence.

This closing self-awareness is supposed to be moving. It’s supposed to redeem the previous 200-odd pages of stagnancy. But Ramble’s concluding tenacity feels long past due. Fleeting. Tedious. Even inconsequential. Kind of like the heroine herself and, unfortunately, Gowers’ first book-length work of fiction.

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ABOUT THE BOOK:
When to Walk (Canongate)
By Rebecca Gowers
240 pages
List Price: $14