Publishers Weekly (5/19/14)
In Hellenga’s (The Sixteen Pleasures) latest novel, a Latin
scholar on the precipice of old age wistfully recounts her life—beginning in
1963, the year she and her husband “joined our bodies—if not our souls.”
Francis Godwin, a lapsed Catholic and graduating senior at Knox College in
Illinois (where Hellenga has taught since 1968), met Paul at a party in
celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday. “Paul and I began a torrid affair—at
least that’s how I thought of it at the time, though ‘torrid,’ from Latin
torridus, meaning parched or scorched, — is perhaps not the right word.” Their
marriage was a meeting of the minds, but also a pairing of opposites: “He loved
Homer, I loved Vergil; he turned to Plato for his metaphysics, I turned to
Lucretius.” In the last year of Paul’s life, their grown daughter Stella’s
reprobate husband, Jimmy, wreaks havoc on their quiet lives, triggering a
primal virulence within Francis unknown even to herself. Reeling from the
aftershock of her impulsivity, which goes unpunished, she must reevaluate
herself and her faith. The minor characters aren’t as strong as Francis, but Hellenga’s feisty and learned narrator, who
travels from the Casa di Giulietta in Verona to TruckStopUSA in Ottawa, is an
entertaining guide. (July)
Chicago Magazine (5/29/14)
Six Great
Summer Books by Local Authors
The Confessions of Frances Godwin by Robert Hellenga
Bloomsbury
USA (July 8)
The Galesburg, Illinois, novelist chronicles the
twilight-year confessions of a widowed Latin teacher whose hernia operation
prompts her to reexamine her life. In its best moments, Hellenga’s deceptively
simple prose recalls that of Marilynne Robinson (Gilead).
Shelf Awareness (6/19/14)
The Confessions of
Frances Godwin is told in the end-of-life recollections of
widow and retired high-school Latin teacher Frances Godwin. She narrates her
story in a no-nonsense, practical Midwest voice, yet faced with death and loss,
she mostly wants to understand the spiritual value of her life. Despite growing
up in a strong Polish Catholic farm family in Galesburg, Ill., under a
matriarch who believed that homemade pierogi and a full church confession to
"clean out your attic" were central to living a good life, Frances
strayed from the church and fell in love with her Shakespeare professor, Paul.
While attending a postgraduate Latin seminar in Rome, she met up with him and
soon became pregnant with their daughter, Stella--all before Paul divorced his
wife and finally married Frances. Paul's good humor and easy camaraderie with
her uncles win over her suspicious mother, but Frances never quite shakes the
nagging guilt over her adultery and out-of-wedlock pregnancy. When a grown
Stella takes up with Jimmy, a thuggish ex-con Italian Catholic from a Milwaukee
produce-distribution family, and Paul develops rapidly advancing lung cancer,
Frances finds herself racking up more sins, guilt and remorse to protect her
family ("I had crossed a line.... No going back. Not that there's ever any
going back.... Actually, there was a way to go back. I knew the drill:
contrition, confession, satisfaction. But I was in no mood to turn
around").
Like his previous novels The Fall of a Sparrow and The Sixteen Pleasures, Robert Hellenga's
new novel is based in the heart of the Midwest with significant interludes in
the ancient cities of Italy. Both Classics scholars, Paul and Frances warm to
the cadences of Romeo and Juliet in Verona, trade lines from Catullus and Shakespeare over Paul's
special Parmesan lamb chops and an aged Barolo, track the constellations with a
home telescope, and enjoy Chopin's études that Frances plays on their old
Blüthner grand piano. Yet this is also a thoroughly Midwestern novel, with all
its hog slaughtering, school plays, train whistles and truck stops. Hellenga
neatly balances the pallet trucks of the wholesale produce business with the
idiosyncrasies of translating the ribald poetry of Catullus. He even throws in
an imagined dialogue between Frances and an irreverent God ("I have a lot
of things to do. Do you have any idea how many galaxies there are, just in the
visible universe?") and somehow makes it work.
The complex but homespun
Frances, who genuinely wants to understand her life and live her last years
well, carries the work. She sees clearly and speaks plainly when she finally
confesses again after 43 years: "We're all stardust. But that's not
enough. Not for me, anyway." Although the story ranges wide, The Confessions of Frances Godwin is firmly rooted in the culture and values of Hellenga's
perfectly rendered Midwest.
–Bruce Jacobs,
founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kansas
Robert Hellenga's Midwestern widow looks back
on a life of good intentions and disappointments with open eyes and hope for
redemption.