The Romantic

"[A] heartbreaking and compassionate novel . . . Gowdy is a miraculous writer. The pages of The Romantic brim over with so much real life they practically breathe."—Chicago Tribune

"An uncommonly fine novel, peopled with three-dimensional characters animated by an emotionally convincing plot . . . [Gowdy] just gets better and better with each work of fiction."—The Seattle 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."—Los Angeles Times

"Once again, in The Romantic, Barbara Gowdy reminds us of the crucial importance of passion, as her characters negotiate back and forth across the years and across the continent. Louise is a fascinating and complicated heroine and, in Gowdy's lustrous prose, every page of her journey is absorbing and suspenseful. An immensely satisfying novel."—Margot Livesey, author of Eva Moves the Furniture

"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 New York Times

0"Gowdy's prose is lyrical yet matter-of-fact . . . [Her] depiction of unrequited love and familial affection is a memorable one because of the singular way she presents it, and because of its honesty."—The Providence Journal

"Moving seamlessly between Louise's childhood, her teen years, and her present, this novel is a sad, beautiful examination."—Booklist

"In her last novel, Gowdy plausibly depicted life in Africa from the perspective of elephants (The White Bone). Here she returns to the human realm with an equally convincing tale of two young Canadians bound together by obsessive attachment . . . A skillfully crafted examination of love's complications, this is recommended for most fiction collections."—Library Journal

"This novel is as beautifully written as its predecessors, but more traditional than the Canadian writer's usual fiction . . . In reining in her imagination to the limits of a conventional love story, Gowdy has produced her most haunting and sensitive novel to date."—Publishers Weekly