Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful but...
Review: "The Romantic" was, overall, a great read but it still left me wanting more on the last page. It 'forgets' to answer a few questions (for me), like "Why does Abel turn into an alcoholic, since nothing in life seems to bother him?", or "what happened to Jerry after the retaliation?". This book makes me wanting more, considering the words are put together so beautifully,
Rating: 
Summary: Love in All its Madness
Review: "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness." Friedrich Nietzsche's take on love could apply to Louise Kirk, the main character in this book. Louise becomes acquainted with love at an early age, falling in love at the age of nine with Abel, the adopted son of her neighbours. This happens just after her former beauty queen mother leaves without a reason or a trace. Abel moves away, but as the two grow up, they have a series of separations and reunions, each with both sublime and painful moments. Each break-up has its reasons for being the permanent end of the relationship. But the relationship goes on and on, seeming to have a life of its own. Louise has many struggles--the disappearance of her mother, her father's remote parenting, his endless and hopeless longing for his wife to return, the awkwardness of finding a life. Louise becomes a woman, and despite many reasons to do so, never loses her love for Abel, who can't quite love her back the way she loves him. This is the story of the endless permutations and combinations of love--young, innocent, joyful, painful, unrequited, lost, tragic. This story's subtlety is deceptive. It is powerful. It will haunt you. Did you love enough? Too much? Compare yourself to Louise.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting & beautifully written
Review: All I can say is: I couldn't put it down. Barbara Gowdy writes with detail and precision, but she also writes with passion and insight. I cared very deeply for these characters, and I was devastated at the end, even though it was not a surprise.The book revolves around Abel & Louise (yes, like Abelard and Heloise), and their relationship with each other from childhood through early adulthood. The Romantic is simply an exquisitely tragic love story. It will haunt you.
Rating:
Summary: In Hindsight
Review: Almost three years ago I broke up with my college boyfriend. Decided that my independence didn't fit with his dependence. Since then, I've dated on-and-off but still haven't found another "one." Barbara Gowdy made everything clear to me. You love once, you'll always love. It's in your heart. This was a difficult book to read because the emotions she exercised were so real. Setting down the book at points was necessary because I couldn't help but tear up. Why did I like the book so much if it made me so sad? I don't know. It brought back reality like a defibrillator brings back a cardiac victim. Reality. Right on.
Rating:
Summary: unaffecting "Romantic" limps to sappy predictable conclusion
Review: By the time Barbara Gowdy drags readers through some three hundred pages of overwrought prose, she has long since wrung out every conceivable drop of sympathy we may have produced for her hapless protagonist, Louise Kirk. Dealt the unspeakable cruelty of childhood abandonment by her beautiful, remote mother, Louise never recovers, instead squandering her life on unrequited love.
Louise initially transfers her need for affirmation to an exotic neighbor who is the mother of an orphaned son, Abel; soon thereafter, Louise predictably falls in love with him. The quiet, introspective and excessively sensitive Abel never reciprocates, instead dangling crumbs of affection to the romantically-challenged Louise. Her unreciprocated love becomes the focus of this ill-paced, poorly integrated novel.
It doesn't take long to figure out that all will probably not end well for either Louise or Abel. Neither is a particularly compelling character; both have numerous unaddressed flaws. Instead of examining these character weaknesses, the author inexplicably has chosen to tell the story from three distinct tenses, the result of which causes the reader to know demise without reason, destruction without understanding. Just when one narrative strand captures attention, Gowdy abandons it for another. The result is an unsatisfying patchwork of a book, pretty from the outside, but insubstantial, much like bricks made without straw.
What is most disappointing is that Gowdy is a good writer who somehow became enamored with a shopworn theme and a distinctly unsatisfying means of explaining it. Those strong enough to endure countless pages of female weepiness, lassitude and submissiveness to fate will delight in Louise's character. Most of us will have long since forgotten the novel's powerful beginning and have screamed, many times over, for Louise to get a grip on her life.
Gowdy's initial pages, which explore the relationship between Louise and her icy Grace, are compelling and authentic. To be made insecure by a parent is one of the greatest hurts a child could experience. Grace's chiseled beauty and her manifest discomfort with marriage and motherhood inflict more than insecurity on Louise. The insecure child idolizes and fears her mother, and the subsequent abandonment on the child by itself would have made a powerful book.
Grace's squawk-like laugher, a "laugh that can shatter glass," matches her ability to hurt Louise. Though the mother soothes criticism of her daughter with indirect praise, Grace also "often dulled praise with an indirect wound." It is no accident that an already insecure child grows up to be a woman with little or no hope. Gowdy never seizes the opportunity to reflect on the child's loss, and this lack of sympathetic analysis results in a sadly unaffecting presentation of the legacy of loss.
"The Romantic" never lives up to its possibilities or its author's talents. Characters who ought to have been more fully developed, particularly Louise's diligent, betrayed father, fall of the pages. A story which ought have been told directly meanders through different time and spatial zones, leaving the reader exhausted and, even worse, disinterested. Beautifully turned phrases remind the reader of Barbara Gowdy's talent but only tease our emotional appetite, delicious psychological appetizers without a substantial meal.
Rating:
Summary: Barbara's Genius
Review: I picked out The Romantic from the recent arrivals shelf in my library for light weekend reading. At that time little did I know that it would turn out to be one of the best books I've read in years. Barbara Gowdy's ability to relay the emotions and feelings of her characters is a talent rarely seen in other authors. She puts her characters into unexpected plots and subsequently shows us through their emotions, how they are able to deal with their situation; whether successfully or tragically. I really enjoyed the book and so will many others. It is a rare find!
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best Books In A While
Review: It has been a long time since I have been so taken with a novel as I was with Barbara Gowdy's The Romantic. The Romantic tells the tragic love story of Louise and Abel as they grow from two children who live on the same street in a Toronto neighborhood into adults fighting to find their places in the world, and their story could not be told more beautifully. Gowdy's writing reveals all of the quirks and habits of two everyday people that make them unique and wonderful, as well as the things that make them terrible. She brings poignancy to mundane moments, and the story is so well-crafted that it will leave you wanting more, and more, and more, even though the end of the story is revealed on the first page. The main characters are human, and Gowdy shows them as such. They each have moments of brilliance and moments of failure and many places in between. At the end, you may not agree with them, but it is impossible not to love them like your own friends and family members. The narrative is from Louise's perspective, and from chapter to chapter she switches from past to present. Some readers may find this jarring, but I found it to be surprisingly cohesive due to Gowdy's skill at bringing the reader back and forth without confusion. The changes in time add to the book's suspense, and with every flash back or forward in time, the reader is left wanting to find out what happened next, reading on more and more urgently to find out. The Romantic has restored my faith that the art of the novel is still alive and well and living on your local bookstore's shelves. Any serious reader would be hard pressed not to love this book.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful - Heartbreaking - Everything You Could Ask For
Review: This beautiful tale that crosses time and passions is a one of the loveliest books I have read in ages. "The Romantic" by Barbara Gowdy is an amazingly look into the world of Louise Kirk, and her childhood infatuation with neighbor boy, Abel. When Louise's own family leaves her cold and wanting better - she begins a life long fascination and some might say addiction with the Richter family. Ms. Gowdy's talent is full and complete. I loved her use of tone and romance. Her characters are fully developed - and she handles loss with such grace and talent. I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone. Really amazing read!
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful - Heartbreaking - Everything You Could Ask For
Review: This beautiful tale that crosses time and passions is a one of the loveliest books I have read in ages. "The Romantic" by Barbara Gowdy is an amazingly look into the world of Louise Kirk, and her childhood infatuation with neighbor boy, Abel. When Louise's own family leaves her cold and wanting better - she begins a life long fascination and some might say addiction with the Richter family. Ms. Gowdy's talent is full and complete. I loved her use of tone and romance. Her characters are fully developed - and she handles loss with such grace and talent. I loved this book and would recommend it to anyone. Really amazing read!
Rating: 
Summary: Searching for reasoning
Review: This book was not quite what I expected. It was my first book by Gowdy and I don't think I'll be interested in reading more later either. I enjoyed the characters, all except Abel, who was pretty much the center of the book. I enjoyed everyone from Louise's nanny to Abel's mother. I just couldn't feel for Abel, as he wasn't much of a lovable character to me. I couldn't understand what Louise saw in him. I am an avid reader and I think that when I say I didn't understand where a story was going or what was the point- I think it's true for many readers. It started out ok, with some suspense when you hear Abel has just died (don't worry, I didn't give anything away, this was literally within the first 20 pages). You feel sad for Louise and wonder what lead up to this point. I was anxious for this great love story. That's not what this is though. This book is a mess. You go from chapter to chapter not knowing what point in time the next chapter will be in. You go from present day where apparently Louis is in her 20's or 30's to when she's about 10 to when she's 17. In no order. I don't understand what the author was trying to do. I couldn't make heads or tails how she decided to order the book in the way she did. It was often confusing and frustrating. And I read many books that have the similar format of jumping back and forth in time frames, but never have I read a book like this where there seems to be no thought or order put into it. Maybe it's just me? I also didn't care for Abel's "ending". There wasn't much to explain why he was the way he was. Left me wondering a bit. As the whole book did really.
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