The Confessions of Frances Godwin, by Robert Hellenga
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The Confessions of Frances Godwin, by Robert Hellenga
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The Confessions of Frances Godwin is the fictional memoir of a retired high school Latin teacher looking back on a life of trying to do her best amidst transgressions--starting with her affair with Paul, whom she later marries. Now that Paul is dead and she's retired, Frances Godwin thinks her story is over--but of course the rest of her life is full of surprises, including the truly shocking turn of events that occurs when she takes matters into her own hands after her daughter Stella's husband grows increasingly abusive. And though she is not a particularly pious person, in the aftermath of her actions, God begins speaking to her. Theirs is a deliciously antagonistic relationship that will compel both believers and nonbelievers alike.
From a small town in the Midwest to the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, The Confessions of Frances Godwin touches on the great questions of human existence: Is there something "out there" that takes an interest in us? Or is the universe ultimately indifferent?
The Confessions of Frances Godwin, by Robert Hellenga- Amazon Sales Rank: #112114 in Books
- Published on: 2015-10-20
- Released on: 2015-10-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x .84" w x 5.52" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
From Booklist *Starred Review* Art conservators, college professors, avocado wholesalers, an elephant who paints, blues musicians, snake-handlers, Latin teachers, truck drivers—novelist Robert Hellenga writes about all kinds of people. His books are very different, as that list of characters’ occupations suggests, but they are similar, too, with themes reoccurring like motifs in a fugue: Italy, the nature of beauty, love found and lost, and the rhythms of daily life, which are somehow sustaining both in their intimacy and in their very ordinariness. His latest novel and one of his best, The Confessions of Frances Godwin, incorporates all of these themes while telling a story very different from anything he has done before. Hellenga, who teaches English at Knox College in downstate Illinois, is one of those writers who inspire a special kind of devotion in their readers. When two Hellenga fans encounter one another and learn of their shared enthusiasm, something happens that’s not unlike members of a secret society exchanging funny handshakes. Inevitably, the conversation turns to Hellenga’s first novel, The Sixteen Pleasures (1994), about art conservator Margo Harrington, who reappears in Philosophy Made Simple (2006) and The Italian Lover (2007). In Sixteen Pleasures, Margo is a 29-year-old woman of limited experience who travels to Florence to help with the restoration of art treasures damaged in the great floods of 1966. Living in a convent, she stumbles upon a rare volume of erotica in the convent library and subsequently tumbles into an affair with an older and supremely sophisticated Italian man. The novel is a sumptuous and sensual love story, but it’s also, as Hellenga has described it, an “occupational story,” in that the most sensual passages in the book describe Margo’s detailed, loving work on the pieces of art she helps restore. Above all, though, the novel introduces Hellenga’s great theme of the melancholy transience of love. The lovers in Hellenga’s moving, profound novels do not live in a world of conventional happy endings. His romances often end in attenuated moments of both disappointment and tenderness, partings that have the feel not of failed relationships but of life moving on and working out as it must. The theme reappears in Snakewoman of Little Egypt (2010), about a young woman named Sunny, who grew up in a snake-handling church in Illinois’ Little Egypt area and who falls in love with an anthropology professor, Jackson, entranced by her stories of the Church of the Burning Bush with Signs Following. Jackson and Sunny dance between the “safe harbor” of their life together and “the wider sea of courage, risk, and adventure,” each teaching the other about the many forms of joie de vivre. Yes, it is a melancholy story, but it is also immensely satisfying and even uplifting in that unique way that only deeply felt life can provide. That same sense of deeply felt life pervades Hellenga’s new book. Frances Godwin is a retired high-school Latin teacher looking back at her life with her late husband, Paul, and musing over wrong turns taken and roads untraveled. With marriage and career behind her, she assumes that her life is winding down but quickly learns differently, as she comes to the aid of her daughter, trapped in an abusive marriage. What happens is shocking—the world of decisive action suddenly interrupting the quiet of a contemplative life—but it isn’t the action that drives the story but Frances’ attempts to make sense of it. She calls her story a “spiritual autobiography,” and despite being anything but pious, she engages in ongoing conversations with God, who turns out to be quite a wily fellow. Frances wants desperately to believe that “the universe itself cares,” but what if it doesn’t? That’s the question she grapples with in the most compelling of terms, never blandly abstract, always grounded in the particulars of the everyday. And it is in those particulars that Frances finally approaches some inevitably tentative answers, or what pass for answers in a world defined by change: “That’s the problem with autobiography,” she reflects. “You see a shape, you see ups and downs, conversions, turning points, reversals. But then you keep on living, . . . and every time you look down on your life, you see a different shape.” The beauty of this novel and, in fact, of all of Hellenga’s work, lies in the scrupulous attention he pays to those different shapes that life takes. Like Frances, we find in their very concreteness a way of living with the uncertainty that surrounds us. --Bill Ott
Review
“Hellenga's feisty and learned narrator, who travels from the Casa di Giulietta in Verona to TruckStopUSA in Ottawa, is an entertaining guide.” ―Publishers Weekly
“In this highly original novel exploring the hidden depths of one older woman, Hellenga (The Sixteen Pleasures) shows that he is a writer who deserves to be more widely known.” ―Library Journal
“Hellenga neatly balances the pallet trucks of the wholesale produce business with the idiosyncrasies of translating the ribald poetry of Catullus . . . Although the story ranges wide, The Confessions of Frances Godwin is firmly rooted in the culture and values of Hellenga's perfectly rendered Midwest.” ―Shelf Awareness
“Hellenga creates a teacher you will wish you had studied with, and a character to remember.” ―Saint Louis Post-Dispatch
“One heck of a plot . . . Hellenga, the famously philosophical novelist . . . is 'inclined,' he recently wrote on his blog, 'to accept the accumulated wisdom of the ancient near East' but . . . 'can't entirely abandon the quest for some larger meaning.' It is this quest for meaning that this latest book, like much of Hellenga's work, is all about.” ―Chicago Tribune
“His latest novel [is] one of his best . . . Hellenga . . . is one of those writers who inspire a special kind of devotion in their readers . . . The beauty of this novel and, in fact, of all of Hellenga's work, lies in the scrupulous attention he pays to those different shapes that life takes. Like Frances, we find in their very concreteness a way of living with the uncertainty that surrounds us.” ―Booklist
“Gripping and unpredictable . . . . The Confessions of Frances Godwin both sums up and surpasses Hellenga's body of work. This is a story of maturity by maturity for maturity, written with subtlety, deep learning, and wisdom.” ―The Washington Post
About the Author Robert Hellenga was educated at the University of Michigan and Princeton University. He is a professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and the author of the novels Snakewoman of Little Egypt, The Sixteen Pleasures, The Fall of a Sparrow, Blues Lessons, Philosophy Made Simple, and The Italian Lover. He lives in Galesburg, Illinois.
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Most helpful customer reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful. Modern treatment of St Augustine? Maybe. LOVED this book! By Timothy J. Bazzett First things first: I LOVED THIS BOOK!! I know, caps and exclamation points - I sound like a teenage girl. But I'm a guy, and I'm more than fifty years past teenage. But Robert Hellenga's newest novel, THE CONFESSIONS OF FRANCES GODWIN, was just so damn good I couldn't believe it. Well, yes I could, because I've already read three other Hellenga novels over the past fifteen years or so - The Sixteen Pleasures: A Novel, Blues Lessons: A Novel, and Snakewoman of Little Egypt: A Novel - and they were all great.But CONFESSIONS may well be Hellenga's best book yet. I think this one is truly a labor of love. The story is set in Galesburg, home of Knox College, where Hellenga taught English for decades and is now a Professor Emeritus and writer-in-residence. The town, lovingly mapped and described, is so important to the story that it practically becomes a character. The title character grew up on a farm nearby and attended Knox College, where she met her husband, Paul Godwin, her Shakespeare teacher (married to someone else at the time).Galesburg, Milwaukee, Rome, Verona. All important places to Frances Godwin. Parts of her life both with Paul and later with her troubled daughter Stella and by herself. Faith, art, music, life itself. All the big questions are in here, and maybe some answers too. I'm not going to do any plot summaries here. The thing I kept wondering as I was reading was whether Hellenga was intentionally writing a kind of modern version of St Augustine's Confessions (Penguin Classics).Because narrator Frances calls her story a "spiritual autobiography." A lapsed Catholic, she is fluent in Latin, a dead language, but also the language Augustine wrote in. She has her regrets about things she has done in her life, things recounted in stark and vivid detail, and is constantly toying with the idea of confessing her great sins, and moving "out of the shadows into the light." She has frank conversations with God, a God who seems oddly human and keeps urging her to confess. On one of her trips to Italy she is even carrying a copy of Augustine's CONFESSIONS.I know a little about St. Augustine, but have to confess I have never read his books. So I am a bit over my head in trying to make a comparison. In the contest of wills between Frances and God, does God win? (Sorry, but I couldn't resist that.) That's something each reader will have to decide. The thing is, this narrative is just so rich with sidebars and details about so many things - all fascinating - that I just did not want it to end. But it does, and when I read that last paragraph, that final line, it gave me goose bumps. It was so perfect, positively perfect.One more comparison kept popping up as I was reading Hellenga's CONFESSIONS. I kept remembering Agatha McGee, a fictional spinster teacher, the creation of the late Minnesota writer, Jon Hassler, who first appeared in his 1976 novel, Staggerford: A Novel, and then in several subsequent novels. Like Frances, she was Catholic, but a pragmatic and practical one, who also had her doubts at times.St Augustine or Jon Hassler? Yeah, there are parallels and comparisons, but Hellenga's Frances Godwin is one of a kind, a kind you don't often see in contemporary fiction. I am selfishly hoping that Hellenga might follow Hassler's lead and bring Frances back again in another novel. She's that fascinating a character. Did I say I LOVED this book? Oh yeah, I guess I did. Terrific book! VERY highly recommended.- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. If you liked GILEAD... By "switterbug" Betsey Van Horn If I were to identify a book that snuck up and bit me, this would be the one. I remember, when I read Marilynne Robinson's GILEAD, feeling immediately that I was in the presence of a great author. With Hellenga's novel, (and this is my first by him), I was instantly engaged, but it wasn't until the halfway point that I realized how stunning this book was, and consequential.Frances lives with ongoing doubt regarding her faith. She's from a strait-laced Polish Catholic family in small-town Illinois, her mother especially traditional. But Frances sought to be a scholar, which creates a more expansive intellect--and with that comes dubiety. In the 60's,when she has an affair with her college Shakespeare professor, Paul, she tries to shake him off before her two-month trip to Rome to study spoken Latin. Later, she marries him, but not until after their daughter, Stella, was born (Paul had to get a divorce first). That's two transgressions right there!The first-person narrative is intimate and palpable, as if Frances is talking directly to you. It is laid out like a confessional memoir, which she calls a spiritual autobiography."All narrators are first-person narrators. You can't get ironic distance from yourself, can't see around yourself, can't know more than you know."As the confessions progress, the tension rises. The erudition isn't distracting--rather, the allusions piqued my interest, while adding texture and depth to the story. Everything from Latin, the Classics, Shakespeare, opera, classical music, and piano tuning is folded in neatly and compellingly. The events that cause colossal self-doubt, guilt about her last months with Paul, guilt about not having guilt, and concern for Stella adds piercing poignancy. Her combative conversations with God--which, in my estimation, are to be taken figuratively--buttress the weight of the novel while giving it levity.An added bonus for me is the inclusion of Santa Maria Trastevere, a baroque church in Rome that is probably my most treasured edifice anywhere. When I visited this astonishing basilica, it poetically/spiritually brought me to my knees (and I am a secular Jew)! Hellenga's incorporation of the church in the story stole my heart.Finally, the most provocative theme of this book, to me, was the idea that "answers" aren't necessarily the element you are looking for. Rather, it is the questions. Asking the germane questions."I was being tested, too, though I wasn't sure exactly what the questions were."Addendum: you can't leave links in a review, so under the comments section I am supplying a link to Google images of the breathtaking Santa Maria Trastevere basilica.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Esne parata bibere? By Tom Field Robert Hellenga's The Confessions of Frances Godwin (Bloomsbury; 2014) has its moments—like the trays of hors d'oeuvres at the country club. You like all the offerings well enough, but then there's that one item of which you're especially fond. When I saw the plot synopsis on the jacket, I knew I had to pick this novel up. Latin teacher goes rogue! Breaking Bad, NPR style! Who could refuse that story?Our author's hor d'oeuvres were worth the tasting. But some of the technicalities seemed a bit show-off-ish... as if we needed to be convinced how smart he (make that, she) is in the classic languages, music theory, astronomy, religion. Don't get me wrong, I cherish such discussion; I can't get enough of philosophical exploration and deep matters of the human experience. But other than being well-versed, I craved a little more sense of setting, description of character, illustration of the moment at hand. What you expect from a novel. Not to be too sexist here, but frankly, Frances seemed more like a Frank to me, in how she spoke, thought, acted and reacted—but perhaps I discriminate too much, based on my preconceived differences between men and women in my personal observations.I still recommend listening to Frances' confessions. The Latin phrase above translates to "ready for a drink?" and that's how this story is best enjoyed. Read it at night, with a glass of wine, classical music on NPR playing low in the background.— Tom Field
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