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Sympathy for the pedophile

When the third question in an author interview is “Are you suggesting that having sexual feelings for little girls is normal?” you know the writer’s new book isn’t your typical CanLit meditation on memory and loss and longing.

Sure enough, Barbara Gowdy’s new novel, Helpless, is the story of a pedophile who kidnaps and locks up a nine-year-old girl, convincing himself that he’s doing so to protect her from being abused at home. Maclean’s has posted a long and wide-ranging interview with Gowdy – conducted by editor Kenneth Whyte – in which she’s called upon to defend her character and her treatment of him.

Which leads to some startling turns in the discussion: at one point Gowdy argues that past tolerance for “gropers” might have saved lives, “that men being allowed to get away with groping little girls has allowed little girls to live. Nowadays, the minute a man touches a little girl he’d better kill her because his life is over.”

Can’t see that argument going over very well, but give Gowdy credit for one thing: though she’s been accused of sugarcoating the pill by making her pedophile too sympathetic (and Quillblog still feels ambivalent on that score, months after reading the novel), she’s definitely not afraid to go wherever the issues lead her when being questioned.

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