What Poets Need

by Finuala Dowling

Poet John Carson lives in a crumbling seaside house with his sister and niece. He writes feverishly to the woman who has abandoned him as a lover, yet kept him as a correspondent. beautiful, generous . . . and married. The occasional fleeting encounter between the lovers fuels John the writer, but leaves John the man close to despair. To keep his feelings in check, John loses himself in the details of his home life – the never-ending chores of domesticity, his niece’s mysterious eating disorder and the menu he is attempting to write in rhyming couplets save him from himself, most of the time. There is also the eccentric old woman who lives in their garden cottage and the poetry journal that he has just been appointed to edit. Will John and Theresa find a way to overcome everything that holds them apart or is, in fact, a state of permanent longing really what poets need?

Genres: Fiction

250 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2006

Reviews

[Annie Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book! Love her mind and words, laughed out loud, relished the looping of thoughts and phrases and themes. Hesitate to say it's a writers' book but really What Novelists Need is "What Poets Need." All the same, I do agree with previous reviewer - overall form doesn't work. No Act 2, perhaps? The real pain is all in the first two thirds of the book. The intensity is diluted in the last section (and I wasn't wild for the rhyming menus and the neat pairings at the end). But the narrator is a beautiful creation, a wonder, his mind and presence. The love of words and flesh and fallibility. I want my own copy to underline and quote, and am setting forth into her poetry next. Highly recommended! Would love to hear what others thought. I undertake to post photos of some of the places described in the book for those who aren't in Cape Town - already have Olympia Cafe in an album - will make a new one called WHAT POETS NEED.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually liked this book more than I expected to like a book about a lugubrious, self-indulgent poet (John) who's in love with a woman who won't leave her husband but tells John he can write to her. And write to her he does; the whole book is composed of letters to her. I do like the quiet moments where John tries to run a literary magazine, with some success and some tearing of hair, and where he cares for his niece, who is struggling with an eating disorder. If the book had been more about that stuff and less an unhealthy coping mechanism about this woman we don't get to meet, I'd have enjoyed it even more. But maybe not meeting her is the point. I think Dante thought Beatrice was much more beautiful from across the bridge.

The author is herself a poet, so it stands to reason that it's beautifully written.

[Jude · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first novel I have read by Finuala Dowling. I read it because it is set in the Western Cape, and the places are familiar to me, and because the narrator is a poet. His poems are scattered through the book and form part of the narrative. The prose and the poems are beautiful - soft, evocative, and gentle. The best parts are the descriptions of the surroundings - the house, the sea, the beach. John is a sad, lonely narrator, struggling to cope without the one he loves. We learn of their relationship through John's letters so that Theresa herself remains distant, vague, almost translucent. The first half of the novel is the most successful, and then the narrative tapers off as though neither the author nor the narrator knew where to go next. There were a few other characters who were more earthy, more real - Mrs Cloete, the actress, and Red Moffat, the poet, for example. And of course young Sal, the narrator's niece, who is both precocious and vulnerable. I shall read more of Dowling's novels.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Observation of daily activity and human emotion (I myself haven't realised I feel) was gripping.
Best book I have read this year.

[Phalana Tiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

In love with this book. I was tempted to steal it from my school library and cherish it for myself.

[Angie Fehl · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this epistolary novel, sporadically employed poet John Carson is living in South Africa with his sister and niece while writing to his ex-lover, Theresa. While trying to drum up inspiration for his own poetry, John helps his single sister in the raising of his 9 year old niece, Sal. He also tries to make ends meet by working as the editor of a start-up poetry journal and designing the menu for a new restaurant in town, the owner wanting the dish descriptions to be written in rhyming couplets.

John's letters to Theresa, while they do address their former romantic connection and his present pining away for her, are mostly made up of his day to day activities, his random thoughts, writing inspirations, and his concerns over his niece who starts to show signs of an eating disorder after some schoolmates bully her about her weight (more troubling, the girl doesn't even have a weight problem so it takes virtually no time for her weight to drop to seriously dangerous levels).

So, as you can maybe guess, the story here isn't all that uplifting. It's also not all that interesting. It's not badly written, just the plot veers into largely forgettable. I might be a little biased in that I was pretty quickly turned off by John being all mopey over a very much married Theresa, who explains to John that she called off the relationship after her husband caught on to what was going on. Getting caught gives Theresa a change of heart. She decides she "can't hurt him" (her husband, that is), so she decides to honestly try to repair her marriage. Almost commendable, except that she encourages John to keep writing to her, giving him the mistaken idea that he only needs to bide his time until she "comes to her senses" again. I was also a little confused with Theresa's letters going on about how she believed in her marriage vows. Wait, what?! You're giving this speech to your side-guy?! I also had to laugh at her line, "If you are willing, if you will accept, what I can offer you, forever and ever, is a very painful unrequited love." Theresa, you generous goose! LOL

Ugh, these two. Yeah, I just ended up not liking the two of them much at all.

I also thought John tended to overshare in some of his letters. He gives play by plays of cold and allergy symptoms, troubles with neighbors, his past failed relationship with a feminist, his bouts of constipation... just made me think THIS is the route he wants to go to try to woo this woman back?! If I was the woman I'd be feeling like good riddance, I dodged a whiney bullet there!

The bit I did really like is when John starts to grow up a bit and puts his obsession with Theresa to the side to address Sal's worsening eating disorder. He really steps up as the uncle and does all he can to be a nurturing, supportive adult figure in her life, trying to figure out ways to build her self-esteem back up and get her to feel okay about eating again. THAT part I became really invested in. Sadly, it was a pretty small element drowned in the soap opera between him and Theresa.

[Ekin Kench · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charming Kalk Bay novel revolving around the poet, sister and niece and an email love affair with married Theresa. Touching in a good way and evocative of that community in a very easy, Cape Town way.

[Tiah]

A writer's novel. Perhaps not to everyone's taste - but I adored the book. Reread parts as I was reading for the pleasure of it all.

[Bridget Dore · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can't live in CT and not read (and love) this book

[Marita Snyman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book - why don't I read more South African authors? A few times though I felt Dowling didn't convince as a male voice yet it didn't detract from the novel at all