Bøger af David Helwig

A collection of unpublished poems by a distinguished poet and novelist.

A self-made woman's dramatic sweep through the turmoils of mid-century America and Europe. Jean has no plan; self-contained, imaginative, and resilient, she acts first and rationalizes later. Her specialty is moving on, choosing adventure all the way. At 17, she is ready to slip into the secret life of adults. To save a smuggler on Lake Ontario, she rows hard and keeps her mouth shut. Posing for art classes and "art" photographs in New York leads to a silent movie career in California and Paris, which in turn leads to marriage into an aristocratic family. After riots and strikes, after World War II and compromises with Vichy, after losing her family and her money, she uses a friend's leavings to remake herself as an art dealer. Old age finds Jean in a Montreal apartment, still earning her living by letting people look at her, still propelled by uncontrollable bravery. The Time of Her Life follows a strong and beautiful woman through a life permeated with drama and intrigue.

A snug country house, a snowy landscape in a place that could be Prince Edward Island, a small-town lawyer bumbling through an emotional crisis -- "Close to the Fire" is a winter's tale that warms the heart while gently chilling the blood. Many years ago, the lawyer (then a student) persuaded the woman who is now his wife to desert Orland, her older husband, and run away with him. Now Orland arrives on their doorstep to die. The lawyer recalls the moral force he exerted to make Marijke change loyalties instead of simply enjoying a little adultery. Does sheltering a dying man atone for stealing his wife? The lawyer doesn't know and isn't sure he cares until a dramatic fire and Orland's death rearrange the domestic hearth.

A retired academic is called to a remote university to speak as the replacement for an old friend recently deceased in unusual circumstances. The Stand-In is a transcript of these lectures, revealing a sophisticated tale of art, fame, and adultery that unfolds through rambling anecdotes and flashes of scholarly grandstanding. Fiercely funny and bitterly ironic, The Stand-In has been called the best academic doppelganger story since Nabokov's Pale Fire.

"e;Birdsong, wind: here by the ocean every noise was surrounded by silence that reached all the way to the stars. Monica studied the white shingled building above the slope of green lawn, deep bays rising two storeys on each side of the front door and the windowed porch. You felt the big rambling construction must have a memory, old thoughts. Listen, I am the voice of what once was. I am as real as the beating of your hungry heart. A flash of sun blinded her, a pirouette of the dazzling god."e;So begins David Helwig's Saltsea. A lovely, meditative novel, a story about memory, and about how what once was continues to affect what is and what will be. It is the story of a place, of the family that used to own it, and the people who have been its caretakers. Saltsea, a hotel on the shores of Prince Edward Island, where people come for a brief time, their lives intersecting in intimate and unforeseen ways. The characters of Saltsea are finely drawn, with humour, love and compassion. Sadness and even tragedy are a constant here, but Helwig handles it all humanely, without sentimentality, and with the control of a writer at the height of his powers. Saltsea, befitting a novel so concern with memory, is not something you will soon forget.