Book Reviews
Writes of Spring
By Lissa Richardson, Fri., April 14, 2000
With Your Crooked Heart: A Novel
by Helen DunmoreAtlantic Monthly Press, 250 pp., $24
Bestselling British writer Helen Dunmore has written a psychological family drama that, though set in contemporary London and vicinity, feels timeless. With Your Crooked Heart is the story of brothers Paul and Johnnie, Paul's wife Louise, and the product of all three of them, the daughter Anna. Each character is deeply entwined with the others, connected by -- smothered by -- shared experience, and yet fully alone and narcissistic.
Paul is the older brother, and he acts accordingly. As if he were in a fairy tale, Paul has worked himself out of the poverty he and Johnnie inherited. His extreme wealth is part hard work, part natural gift: "Paul had an instinct for changes in property values, the way other people have instincts for a change in the weather." Money gets Paul what he wants, but more importantly, it gets him what he wants to give the people whom he loves. For Paul, money is love. It is what he has made, and it is what he has to share.
Johnnie, Louise, and Anna are the beneficiaries of that love, and, in a way, it harms them all. Louise is Paul's first wife. She seeks comforting, quiet places where she can lazily reflect upon human nature, and where, falsely, she can feel secure. To reward Paul, to solidify her role as a wife, she gives him a daughter. But the daughter is Johnnie's, conceived in one night of passion in the park, the only time she sleeps with Johnnie, though they have loved each other playfully and passionately for years: "I wonder why we were so good. There was I, lying naked in the bath, there was Johnnie. ... It wouldn't have taken anything, but we held back."
Paul wants to give Johnnie, who is 12 years younger, everything he can. He wants to protect Johnnie, to keep him from hurting. Johnnie knows this, and he takes from Paul but breaks from Paul at the same time. Johnnie is handsome, irresponsible, and eternally young. He becomes involved in crime -- exactly what kind is unclear, but it has something to do with drugs -- and he gets into serious trouble. Johnnie's trouble plagues both Paul and Louise as they struggle to love him enough so that he won't get hurt.
With Your Crooked Heart is written in beautiful, poetic prose that homes in on the conflicts within each character. The point of view shifts, from first, to third, to second person, creating a sense of both confusion and intimacy at the same time. The characters have the same effect upon the reader: They are troubled, and their problems can only spiral into each other. The result is a novel that is conflicting, absorbing, and classically tragic.