The Confessions of Frances Godwin

May 19, 2014
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.

May 15, 2014
Catullus, the confession box, a loaded gun and a muscle car punctuate a former teacher's memories in a novel rich with life and strangely awkward.Entering retirement after teaching Latin for 41 years in Illinois, Frances Godwin begins to write of her past in what becomes a "spiritual autobiography" as she ponders love, regrets, losses and wrongs unredressed. Her 33-year marriage ends painfully as her husband slowly succumbs to lung cancer. She can't forgive herself for not granting some of his wishes. She's also troubled by her violence in dealing with her daughter's abusive husband, then struggles with the Roman Catholic imperative to formally confess her sin. As happens to many of the main characters in the six previous novels by Hellenga (Snakewoman of Little Egypt, 2010, etc.), this Midwesterner goes to Italy, where she unburdens her soul to a priest whose reaction is laissez faire. Odder still are a meeting with her dead husband and her conversations with the voice of God. They're presented as literal chats-comic, ironic, combative (the Almighty on Bill Clinton: "I told him to keep it in his pants"). There's another sort of deity in the deus ex machina supplied by the valuable vintage car she left covered for years in her garage. With a woman as intelligent and well-grounded as Frances-a published translator of Catullus, an accomplished pianist, a lover of beauty, a seeker of life's pith-these implausible elements raise unfortunate doubts about whether she should be taken seriously.A resourceful storyteller, Hellenga presents a likable heroine confronting guilt, self-doubt and wavering faith, a woman strong enough to do just fine without divine intervention.

COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 15, 2014
Because Hellenga is the author of "Snakewoman of Little Egypt" and "The Sixteen Pleasures", readers of serious fiction will want to grab this new book, the fictional memoir of a retired high school Latin teacher. Frances looks back on her life with some regrets but remains in the here and now, intervening when her daughter's husband gets abusive.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.