Find Him!

by Elaine Kraf

"The Fiction Collective, which was run by a group of experimental writer-editors—including Ronald Sukenick, Jonathan Baumbach, B. H. Friedman, and Peter Spielberg—put out her third book, “Find Him!” Its narrator is an unnamed, childlike woman, who one day awakes dressed as a schoolgirl, unable to eat, speak, or clean herself without aid. Her caregiver is a man named Oliver, who alternately presents as her father, lover, captor, abuser, and teacher. Oliver, we learn, had a wife, Edith, who has vanished; it is strongly suggested that Edith is our narrator before she had a lobotomy. The text weaves together dreams, fantasies, and nightmares, and is broken up by musical notations and drawings. An unsettling meditation on patriarchal violence and the construction of femininity, the novel feels indebted to both Tillie Olsen and Anaïs Nin, two of Kraf’s favorite authors, and deserves to be rediscovered as a significant work of feminist literature."

—from a New Yorker 2022 piece by Hannah Williams

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Literary Fiction, Feminism, Literature

237 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Elaine Kraf is the author of four books: The Princess of 72nd Street, Find Him!, I Am Clarence, and The House of Madelaine.

Reviews

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loopy and slightly (intentionally) bewildering - with its separate threads spun from separate mental states - but still an authentic inside account of a wildly fragile (yet strangely grounded) psyche. I particularly like her perspective on male sexuality: a selfish tyrannical lover with a big drippy lower lip and Dumbo ears (she adores his hideous features!) who eats and masturbates simultaneously, but who still knows how to find the clitoris. Why does she stay with him? Is she a captive or an agoraphobic homebody who willingly submits due to an excess of compassion? Don't ask me, and don't ask me if she murders him in the end, or if she was lobotomized at the beginning. This is one warped and engaging (and perilously funny) take on Pygmalion. With music! Actual music interspersed. And I suspect the whole thing is structured as a four movement symphony. Elaine Kraf: fragility and control (and open-hearted insight) endlessly intertwined.

[Katie T]

Dnf 21% I’m not invested but it does seem interesting.

[MJ Nicholls]

I bought this on a whim since it was £0.22 on Amazon and the other two copies were £20 and upwards. Seemed a steal. Upon reading a dozen or so pages I can see my enthusiasm for this out-of-print curio was misplaced. But no one was ever going to purchase an Elaine Kraf novel anyway, so if I release it into the wilds of the charity shop, it may find a second life among curious weegies anxious to read dated seventies postmodern noodling. Or not. I hate the cover and the title. I also can’t tell if Fiction Collective (the publisher) is an early version of Curtis White’s FC2 press. But the author is rad: a musician and painter and all-round feminist magus. Her best book: The Princess of 72nd Street.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Shelf Awareness review: This third novel by the late Elaine Kraf explores her trademark themes of women's mental health and sexual freedom through a case of Stockholm syndrome.

The unnamed narrator arrives at Oliver's home an unformed adult in need of schooling in numerous subjects, including toileting and speech. As Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle, he teaches her with much ingenuity and patience. Yet he is also capable of violence. She always feels like an intruder, or a replacement for Oliver's departed love, Edith, whose violet dress he likes her to wear. As the woman's naïveté cedes to precocity, their relationship turns sexual--but he only rapes her once, she insists. "He was the prince of men and nothing can change my mind," she declares, despite repellent descriptions: "You would think Oliver loathsome with his huge stomach, urine odor and... brown-clawed toenails." His project is an "Encyclopedia of Great Men" who typify the "frenzied idealist" (perhaps he counted himself one?); he claims to have met Adolf Hitler and corresponded with Vincent van Gogh.

The 1977 novel is obsessed with vision and language. The experimental mixture of forms--poetry, sheet music, letters from Edith--is typical for Kraf and gives temporary relief from a claustrophobic, repetitive narrative. Readers are kept guessing: Was the protagonist kidnapped? Amnesiac? Where is Oliver now? And what do these "evil investigators" want with her? Disturbing but intriguing, Find Him! would be an ideal follow-up read for fans of Liz Nugent's Strange Sally Diamond.

(Posted with permission from Shelf Awareness.) (3.5)

[Erin]

0.5 ⭐
It's been a while since I've suffered through a book this bad. I love originality and quirkiness in a book, but this was awful. This author is hailed as a feminist writer; I didn't see anything remotely feminist about this work. This should have been a dnf, but I'm stubborn and ended up wasting my time.

[Rosie]

I don’t know about this one. I kept swinging from I like this to I hate this to this is genius. Overall I’m excited to read more of her work but I think this is the type of book I need to converse with someone with.

[Rayyan Mikati · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a brilliantly creative book. The writing style is experimental and free - it sort of reminded me of Joan Miro, in a way; "regressing" to a childlike state to find something novel. Kraf embodied her narrator's experience, character, and thought patterns so fully that it isn't just apparent in her word choice but also at the level of form. My regret with this book is that I didn't find someone to play the musical compositions as I went. Reading in bed or on the train made that impossible (and I don't play piano myself, so that presented an obstacle). It would benefit more than most books from deliberate afternoon reading, with total engagement. The introduction's description of how the music evolves over the course of the book was really interesting, but I just didn't have the means for that level of interaction.

The story itself is disturbing. It's a bit Pygmalion, a bit Frankenstein (bride of Frankenstein?), though the idiosyncratic language leaves its exact nature somewhat ambiguous. I think the story does something interesting, where our abused narrator craves the simplicity of "being stupid" (infant-like) in that it removes her temptation to rebel, and diminishes her sense of self. It's painful to *desire* freedom when it is so inaccessible - wouldn't it be easier to not want it in the first place? It's unnatural to be forced into a preferred shape and a preferred hierarchy, and that warps our natural desires and needs in turn.

[Luna]

Find Him! is my third book by Kraf and while her voice is very modern and easy to understand, her characters and plots are all the same. It wouldn't seem too far-fetched if the events across novels were connected and the narrator was the same person.

The narrator is always a woman with a fractured identity having sex with an unconventional lover.
Green is a colour that appears multiple times within and across novels.
Kraf has a fixation with gynecologists, and while she focuses on mental health, and sexuality, it becomes very monotonous.

I tried listening to the audiobook of Find Him!, and hearing the narrator make those pitiful lobotomized child-like moans while describing wanting to sit on Oliver's lap and having her breasts fondled just made me sigh in exasperation.
Three novels of prose like this and the writing begins to become annoyingly contrived and self-deprecating.

The issue might be that I have a Kraf burnout which is a shame considering this is her highest rated novel on Goodreads. Perhaps first-time readers of Elaine Kraf will find Find Him! more of a page-turner but for me it has become too repetitive now.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Labai keistas romanas ir mano jausmai jam šiek tiek sumišę.
Trečias autorės romanas pirmą kart buvo išleistas 1977-iais ir pakartotas šiemet. Elaine Kraf (1946-2013) - rašytoja, poetė, dailininkė, o šiam romanui dar ir sukūrusi muzikinius intarpus. Klausant audio variantą, juos girdim, o spausdintame yra natos. Eksperimentinis romanas išleistas tais 77-ais eksperimentinę literatūrą leidžiančios leidyklos. Čia panašiai kaip mūsų Rara leidykla. Beje, manau, jei tiktu ši knyga. Autorė labai primygtinai traukia skaitytoją dalyvauti. Ne tik pavadinimu - Surask jį!, bet ir klausimais mums:
1. Who do you like better, Oliver or me? ________
2. Do you believe my story? (yes, or No)________
3. Why did Edith leave Oliver?__________
4. Why did Oliver teach me things? ________
5. Who was most at fault? __________
6. Why did Oliver leave? ________
7. Where do you think he is? __________
Ir apačioje palikta tuščią vietą nupiešti Oliverį.
Į klausimus atsakiau ir nupiešiau ant popieriaus skiautės Oliverį. Patiko. Kažkaip suveikia tas įsitraukimas.

Naratorės vardo, amžiaus, iš kur ji atsirado Oliverio name mes nežinom. Oliveris jai pasakė, kad iš žvaigždės. Pasakojimui įgaunant pagreitį pradedi įtarti (čia grynai mano įtarimas), jog ji gali būti jo žmona Edith, sugrįžusi iš ligoninės po lobotomijos operacijos. Turint minty knygos gimimo metus, ta mintis man atrodo logiška ;) Oliveris ją moko kalbėti, valgyti, eiti į tualetą...ir užsiiminėti seksu, aprenkdamas ją mergaitiškais rūbais. Bevardukei jis visas pasaulis iki kol...

Man šis romanas buvo apie patriarchalinį troškimą paversti moterį visiškai valdomu mechanizmu ir apie aukos sumanipuliuotą jauseną. Jūs gal jį perskaitysit kitaip.
Kad ir šiek tiek komplikuotas skaitinys, bet žavus ir žaismingas. Drįstu rekomenduoti.

Beje, man labai jautėsi Rachel Ingalls vaibas. Ne tiek Raros išlestos "Ponia Kaliban", bet jos apysakos "In the Act". Abi gyveno tuo pačiu laiku ir neabejoju, jog Ingalls patiko Kraf kūryba.

[Maykala · Rating 1 out of 5]

Find Him! is an overly complicated book. It follows an unnamed character who finds herself in the home of a man named Oliver. The woman does not know who she is and remembers nothing before finding herself in Oliver’s house. Oliver teaches and “cares” for this woman, or so she says, but he is also her abuser. Oliver leaves one day and this book is the woman's plea to the reader to help find him.

I found most of it to be unreadable to be honest. I stuck with it because I wanted to understand why this is touted as a genius piece of feminist literature. I thought “surely, if I make it to the end I will understand!” but unfortunately that was not the case. I want to be able to commend the author’s unique storytelling and formatting within this novel but I truly do not think reading this novel is worth anyone’s time. It seems as though this novel is supposed to have clever twists and turns, but in the end all of it is just confusing and overly complicated for no reason. I got nothing from it.

*e-ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*

[Desirae Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought this on a whim at The Strand because the story sounded interesting and the cover was beautiful. I couldn’t find basically zero reviews of it. I finished this last night and, well, I thought it was great. There was a point in time where I thought I was losing faith or interesting in the story, but a few pages later it took another weird twist and I read until 1:30AM with the must-finish feeling. It’s all the absurdity and feminism of Poor Things, but with more, I don’t know, psychoanalysis vibes, more rage, more subtleness, more sick. Like one of the best SVU episodes of told from the victims perspective. I’ll read more of this author after reading this book and reading more about her.

[Ruby · Rating 4 out of 5]

forever grateful for these reprints

[kazzie ݁ ˖๋ ࣭ ⭑ · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is actually very deep but all I could think of was those tiktok ladies that post their awful boyfriends and then vehemently defend them in the comments section