The Confessions of Frances Godwin - Tapa dura

One heck of a plot . . . Hellenga, the famously philosophical novelist . . . is 'inclined,' he recently wrote on his blog, 'to accept the accumulated wisdom of the ancient near East' but . . . 'can't entirely abandon the quest for some larger meaning.' It is this quest for meaning that this latest book, like much of Hellenga's work, is all about. (Chicago Tribune)

I stayed up all night with Robert Hellenga's beguiling schoolteacher-murderer and her talkative God, and will now re-read at leisure to savor this author's usual grace notes: music, recipes, learning, philosophy, and travel. The Confessions of Frances Godwin is Hellenga's most audacious fling at just about everything in our culture. (Gail Godwin, author of Flora)

Robert Hellenga is a great storyteller and a most elegant writer. The Confessions of Frances Godwin is a page-turner that made me want to linger on the page. (Hilma Wolitzer, author of An Available Man)

As enjoyable as it is profound, The Confessions of Frances Godwin tackles our most unanswerable questions as only a novel can-not by answering them but by exploring the reasons why we ask in the first place. This is the sort of rare book where the familiar starts to look brand-new, and a reader comes to understand that faith is as much about how one sees as it is about what one believes. (Peter Orner, author of Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge)

His latest novel [is] one of his best . . . Hellenga . . . is one of those writers who inspire a special kind of devotion in their readers . . . The beauty of this novel and, in fact, of all of Hellenga's work, lies in the scrupulous attention he pays to those different shapes that life takes. Like Frances, we find in their very concreteness a way of living with the uncertainty that surrounds us. (Booklist (special feature starred review))

Hellenga's feisty and learned narrator, who travels from the Casa di Giulietta in Verona to TruckStopUSA in Ottawa, is an entertaining guide. (Publishers Weekly)

In this highly original novel exploring the hidden depths of one older woman, Hellenga (The Sixteen Pleasures) shows that he is a writer who deserves to be more widely known. (Library Journal)

Hellenga neatly balances the pallet trucks of the wholesale produce business with the idiosyncrasies of translating the ribald poetry of Catullus . . . Although the story ranges wide, The Confessions of Frances Godwin is firmly rooted in the culture and values of Hellenga's perfectly rendered Midwest. (Shelf Awareness)

Hellenga creates a teacher you will wish you had studied with, and a character to remember. (Saint Louis Post-Dispatch)

Gripping and unpredictable . . . . The Confessions of Frances Godwin both sums up and surpasses Hellenga's body of work. This is a story of maturity by maturity for maturity, written with subtlety, deep learning, and wisdom. (Mary Doria Russell The Washington Post)