With Your Crooked Heart

Paul & Louise are married and childless for 10 years before Louise conceives Anna by an illicit affair with Paul’s younger brother Johnny. Paul is a successful businessman; Johnny runs with the criminal element. Louise becomes an alcoholic because she gained weight with Anna and couldn’t stand being ‘fat’. Because she’s an alcoholic, Paul eventually gets custody of Anna.

It sounds like something you’re read a hundred times, but in Dunmore’s hands, it turns into much more. The story is told from various points of views and persons, but is mainly Louise’s story. As the plot builds to its almost inevitable conclusion, one almost wants to look away and not watch how Louise destroys her life.

This is my first foray into show more Dunmore’s writing (she won the 1996 Orange Prize—now the Women’s Prize for Fiction—for her book A Spell of Winter). Her writing is so adroit! See the stories that these few words paint:
"I love daylight sleep. First of all there are the hours it eats, that you never have to live."

Only one thing puzzles me: Dunmore uses the phrase “it’s not Nova Scotia” twice in the book. As in:
"‘Not much else for her to do up there.’
'It’s not Nova Scotia, Lou.’
A bit of an odd expression, but I let it go."

I, too, think it’s a bit of an odd expression and, since I live in Nova Scotia, I’m curious about it. Can anybody shed any light on Dunmore’s use of this phrase? 3½ stars.

Read this if: you love intelligent use of words; or you fancy a warning tale about lives that go off the track—through personal choices.

‘Heart’ is a qualifying keyword on the Keyword Reading Challenge at Bookmark to Blog. show less

Right from page one I knew I was going to enjoy reading this book. Dunmore is definitely one of my favourite authors. I particularly liked her presentation of the relationship between the two brothers, who were very different people and yet connected closely. Also, the breakdown of a marriage was interesting to me - although surprisingly little detail was provided. I'm not exactly fascinated by young children, but I was one myself once, and I found unexpected empathy with the young daughter of the separating couple. It's a story of life and death, of brief moments which have big impacts, and of unrecognized closeness in relationships.

I finished Helen Dunmore's With Your Crooked Heart and enjoyed it enormously. It's a sensuous and visceral read, charting the lives and loves of a small group of people in London and Yorkshire. Dunmore shows us how little hold or control we have over our lives, and she delights in those transcendent moments when people recognise the ties that bind us to each other. If you know her work already, this is one of the better ones.

I zipped through this book, which I saw recommended here on LT. The writing was beautiful, and the story had a lot of potential, but the author just didn't make me care about any of the characters (except one, a child), and I didn't really have a good feel for what motivated most of the adults. A disappointment.

Also, the author used one stylistic device that really irritated me. The chapters vary in point of view, which is fine, but about half of them are narrated in the second person, i.e., "You did this, you thought that." I really couldn't get into that at all, and don't really understand what it was intended to achieve.

At times, very dark and depressing but with some lighter moments too. This was a compelling read of adultery, deception and alcoholism that illuminates the complicated nature of human relationships.