A Beauty

by Connie Gault

This is another of the books nominated for the Giller Prize this year.

In some ways it reminds me of the book "The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend" in that it is about a young girl that influences life in a small town(s),  However, unlike the girl in Broken Wheel the main character in A Beauty seems to leave dissatisfaction and sadness in her wake.

Elena Huhtala has been abandoned by her father on a failing farm on the Canadian prairies.  She is starving because there is no food and no money.  She doesn't know that her father left her all the money he had but that one of her "friends" dropped into the house and stole it.  A note the father leaves seems to imply that he is going to commit suicide.

Elena is swinging on a swing in the yard, so hungry she doesn't even feel it anymore.  Neighbours pass by on their way to a town dance and invite her to come along.  She agrees to do so.  Elena seems to captivate men.  Every man who sees her seems to want to marry her, or carry her off, even married men.  A stranger arrives at the dance and takes many of the girls for a twirl on the dance floor.  He dances with Elena and eventually invites her to leave with him and leave town.  She agrees and he takes her to the farm to gather a few clothes.  The young man is driving a fancy car.  He lies to her and tells her he is a trader.  In truth he is the son of a rich man who recently graduated.  His father gave him the car as a graduation present. 

They drive from town to town, she loses her virginity, he pays for all the accommodations, meals and even buys her some clothes.  People they meet along the way and the people she meets later in the story all seem to be affected by her... realizing their lives are not what they had hoped for.

As they are driving across the prairies they come to a sign for a town called Gilroy.  For some reason Elena asks him to stop the car and she walks off.  He doesn't come after her.  If he had she probably would have returned to the car.  But he drives off.  She arrives in town with no belongings and no money and starts telling fortunes for a dime per person.  Again all the men in town are smitten with her.  A young girl notices Elena arrive and even thinks Elena saw the girl walking along the tracks looking very lonely.   The young girl is frustrated because her father isn't much of a provider and her mother insists that she carry a lot of the burden for caring for the many children in the family.  Elena is given accommodation at a local widow's house.  She eventually runs off with the young girl's father leaving the family even more destitute.

Some time later Elena's father returns and finds out that she left with a stranger.  We find that he left hopefully that would be the impetus for her to leave town and find a better life.... it didn't work out that way.  He sets out to search for her and makes his way to several of the towns she visited but he loses the trail.  The young girl knows that her father and Elena took a train to Toronto but she doesn't divulge this.  She does keep up a written correspondence with the father and also the man who originally carry Elena off.  The young man married and had a family but his wife died recently.

Then one day Elena returns to Gilroy.  We find out that she dropped the girl's father some time ago and has several relationships since.  Elena learns that her father was alive and tried to find her.  She decides to return to the farm where she finds him alive and well.  The young girl contacts the man who took Elena away and he drives to the farm to see her.  She doesn't want to see him but he decides to sit on the porch til she comes out and talks to him.... he doesn't have anything else to do.

This was a very unusual story.  You wonder if anyone would really have this overwhelming power over people, you never really hear what Elena is thinking, you are only told what she does so you don't get any idea of her true feelings and motivation.  The author did a wonderful job of portraying small town life, the gossiping, the relationships, the busybodies, the despair over the depression and the droughts, the infestation of grasshoppers.  Some of the scenes seem to be magical realism, the storms, the sunsets, carriganna pods popping when Elena arrives at the widow's house. etc.  What would have happened if the father's money hadn't been stolen?  Would Elena have had a happier life and disrupted other people's lives less?