‘The Whirling Girl’ by Barbara Lambert

Reviewed by Katherine Thorsteinson

“Clare Livingston had known nothing about her uncle’s obituary”—with this declaration of death and intrigue Barbara Lambert begins The Whirling Girl, a novel very much concerned with the layers of known and unknown beneath the frequently banal surfaces of human relations. Clare, a botanical artist from Vancouver, is a morally and emotionally conflicted character who takes ownership of her uncle’s Italian estate with the intention of reconciling her troubled memories of him. Upon arrival Clare becomes instantly buried within a romance narrative, often nearing the realm of fantasy, as deception and ambition threaten to ruin lives, and two men steeped in professional archeology compete dangerously for her love and land.

In the fashion of the romance novel, Lambert writes detailed and descriptive prose that for some may be as delicate and beautiful as Clare’s orchid paintings. For others such a style may be at once excessive in its account of insignificant minutiae and distracting to an otherwise complex social narrative. In fact, and rather appropriately to the theme of archeology, it seems as though the most interesting aspects of this novel lie beneath the text’s rather conventional language. Once a reader accepts the ways in which the novel appeals to these customs of language imposed by the romance genre, they can then begin digging deeper to realize the great moral and ontological questions being raised, such as ‘Are theft and deception wrong in all cases?’ ‘What is truth?’ and ‘What is the value of love?’

Ultimately, many of these questions provide an interesting way to question the romance genre itself. To understand how this potentially self critical function of the novel operates, consider the following example in which one of Clare’s suitors charms and lulls her into a sort of hedonistic stupor:

When Gianni returned, he urged her to dress quickly.

‘Come, we will find some little unicorn perhaps, for you who do not believe.’ He led her to his garden, situated between the first defensive wall and a second one, in an area that had once served to shelter residents of the surrounding hamlets from marauding armies…

A flash of saffron crystallized the light. A butterfly settled among the blooms, followed by another, a ripple of silver from its under-wing, a pattern of black lace over the velvet wing-top.

If this portrays the effects of beauty and charisma on the nature of observation and belief, Lambert has successfully and subtly demonstrated the potential strengths and dangers of her own form. This critical function helps to explain why most of the interesting aspects of this novel take place either sub-textually or meta-textually. It falls upon the reader, as it does Clare in her painting approach, to determine whether truth or beauty is the more important, and whether or not to read critically as a result.

Some of the more troubling aspects of this novel have to do with its approach to characterization. The descriptions of native Italians are at worst cartoonish and at best overly romanticized ideals, and women are frequently imagined as simply rejected or pursued objects of love. Clare’s own artistic career appears to have once relied on the doings of her ex-husband and later depend upon the encouragements of her Italian lover Gianni. This is not to say that Clare sees herself in this regard or that she sacrifices fully her own creative impulses to the preferences of her male companions. But the novel does place women in situations that highlight their power differential with men. After all, the Italian estate is Clare’s only real token of social or economic power and even this was left to her by her uncle and ravaged by a group of all-male archeologists.

If such a limited depiction of female presence or strength is part of the self-critical analysis of the romance novel, then this may well be a progressive approach to characterization. On the other hand, such a strategy is so subtle that most readers might ignore it altogether. Ultimately it may be up to individual readers to decide themselves how to interpret these aspects of characterization.

All in all, The Whirling Girl is a complex and multi-dimensional work despite its surface conventionality. Such a novel should appeal to a wide audience—including those who seek sustained and detailed prose, those interested in a suspense plot surrounding social intrigue, or those inquisitive about philosophical problems. Depending on readers’ expectations, the novel will enact and offer very different attitudes regarding the relationship between truth and beauty, and the nature of the romance genre itself. Regardless of your preconceived notions concerning these issues, The Whirling Girl will push you to re-examine its various levels of meaning and above all to take pleasure in the beauty that emerges from this process of excavation.

Cormorant | 380 pages |  $22.00 | paper | ISBN #978-1770860933