Where She Was Standing

by Maggie Helwig

A gripping political thriller that mixes suspense and moral seriousness in ways reminiscent of both Michael Ondaatje and Graham Greene, Where She Was Standing is a moving and exquisitely crafted debut novel from one of Canada’s finest poets. With an international scope of compassion and escalating tension, Maggie Helwig uses the voices and stories of a strong and varied cast of characters to shape a world in which it’s far too “easy to lose people.” A book about disappearance and surveillance, Where She Was Standing contrasts involuntary and overtly political tragedies with the dirty little secrets of our big cities, the deliberate invisibility of society’s dangerous fringe and the emotional unavailability of scarred and scared individuals.  The murder of Lisa James, a young black Canadian photographer, in Indonesian-occupied East Timor, unifies everyone; the presence of her absence, her life, memory, and principles guide both her mother and boyfriend, as well as a journalist, a doctor, and a human rights activist she has never met, through fragile and subterranean explorations of the heart and soul. Their quest is simple, their quest is impossible: their quest is the truth. With both its poetry and its treacherous political landscape, Where She Was Standing is as suspenseful as it is breath-taking. This rare combination has led Helwig to produce something rarer still: an utterly essential page-turner.

Genres: Fiction

280 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2001

About the author

Maggie Helwig (born 1961) is a Canadian poet, novelist, social justice activist, and Anglican priest.

Reviews

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read. Still absolutely brilliant.

[Rachel Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This intricate novel about how the disappearance of a Canadian photographer in East Timor connects people across continents is an unconventional love story, an unusual murder mystery, a suspense novel, a political novel, a character study, and probably more things I didn't think of, and yet it reads as a perfectly integrated whole.

It's one of the best novels I've read all year, and it's sheer chance plus lack of marketing that it didn't become one of those internationally bestselling literary novels that read like thrillers, like Peter Hoeg's Smilla's Sense of Snow. I opened it to the first page just to get a sense of the style, and twenty minutes later, still leaning against my bookshelf, I gave up on my plans for the rest of the day and spent the next few hours on the sofa with it.

I don't want to reveal too much of the plot, since it begins taking unexpected turns somewhere around page thirty, but it begins with Rachel, a burned-out human rights worker in London, getting yet another call about a person who has disappeared overseas. While she begins tracking down information, the eccentric doctor with whom she has a fraught relationship is dealing with people disappearing on the streets of London: not being swept into mass graves or secret prisons, but falling through the cracks of society because nobody cares, or nobody cares enough, or because one person's caring isn't enough.

I also don't want the book to sound preachy or depressing, because it isn't: some of the events are horrifying and tragic, but I was left with a sense of profound and earned hope, and the uplift that comes from reading a really good story. I also wanted to be a better person, or at least more socially committed.

The characters are vivid, the approach to politics is sophisticated, and there's an unexpected amount of rather sideways, deadpan humor. The climax is more startling and powerful than I had expected, having been braced for a let-down just because the build-up was so good. The only misstep I found was that the photographer's boyfriend never came alive for me as a character, and his hobby struck me as more poetic than likely. Highly recommended.

[Yoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure how to categorize this novel, if categories matter. It is a work of fiction loosely based on Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, told kaleidoscopically through the lives of numerous characters. To my surprise, it is a relatively fast read--the main thing that held me up was that I kept bursting into tears. (Although it's true that I am a waterworks and cry at the easiest provocation, in this case it really, really, really was the subject matter of the book.) Or getting hideously depressed due to the unflinching portrayal of human rights abuses, of torture, of death. But the prose is lucid and beautiful--if I could hold it up to the light it would be pure and glassine. There is a danger that happens sometimes when prose focuses too much on being pretty and not enough on what it is conveying. Here Helwig brilliantly navigates this danger: while the prose is beautiful, it never lets you forget that what is being described is atrocity, or the one-two rhythms of people living their lives. I suppose what impresses me so much about this book is that it is a work of conscience (and I take it also to be a work of religion, in a way that is not precisely comforting but nevertheless asks for us to remember what it is to define ourselves as human, and to define others as human).

I love this book, but I don't think I can bear to read it again for a long time. But it can go back to its place in the closet (fiction lives in the closet, nonfiction on the bookcases) until I am ready for it again.

[Miss Ginny Tea]

I just didn't get into it.