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The Only Son
Having escaped the subservience of his youth as the child of domestics to the wealthy Randall family, Walter, a professor, finds his past returning to haunt him when he encounters Ada, a spoiled, rich student and neighbor of the Randalls
241 pages, Hardcover
First published September 6, 1988
2 people want to read
About the author
David Helwig
110 books6 followersDavid Helwig was a Canadian editor, essayist, memoirist, novelist, poet, short story writer and translator.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 20, 2019
Real Rating: 3* of five...barely
The Publisher Says: Throughout his childhood, spent on the estate of the Randall family, Walter observed the charmed life of the very rich. He overheard their secrets whispered in the servants' quarters, and he saw the control they had over his parents who were domestics. For years he dreamed of escaping the subservience of that world, and finally he did. Now he is a professor, leading a comfortable and secure life as a member of the academic community. He is safe from the past.
Or is he? A young woman enters his life, one of his students. Spoiled, wealthy, a neighbor of the family his parents once served. Ada stirs up memories Walter would rather forget. As they become involved in a passionate yet destructive affair, another side to Walter begins to emerge. A more dangerous side.
Through the characters and situations in The Only Son, David Helwig explores the way power is exercised—socially, politically, and sexually. This is an impressive new novel from an author recognized for his dramatic, finely polished writing.
My Review: Tedious Walter, bastard son of rich, married roué-cum-rapist James Randall, does his daddy proud by raping a college girlfriend he "loves;" marries his childhood friend Eunice not long after, has a limp and dishraggy marriage to her and finds out as she lies dying of cancer that Randall raped her too; then gets it all back when he marries second wife, Wild Child Ada. She rapes him. Symbolically, anyway: she stabs him in a drug-fuelled frenzy. Then she leaves his philosophy-professor sad ass with her drug dealer, participates in the murder of a cop in Arizona (a world away in every sense from lawful, manicured Toronto), goes to jail, and Walter shrugs his harness back on to teach undergrads what he knows about Philosophy.
Fast forward one jail sentence. Ada shows back up, he lets her into his house, and they fall back into an easy friends-with benefits relationship while they figure out how to separate, better to say disentangle, their emotionless lives. Walter confronts rapist Randall's dying wife to see if she'll admit he got Walter's mom pregnant. Ada confronts her incestuous brother Michael, not to accuse or vilify him, but to get back together with him; he slings her out on her ear.
Walter gets nothing from senile Mrs. Rapist, I mean Randall. Ada gets some money from Walter so she can skedaddle. Fin.
Stodge through and through. In 1984, the year this was published, it was old hat; now it's older hat, without the lustre (see? I misspelled it like the Canadians do! I'm so cosmopolitan) of being retro. Blah, flavorless, not to be avoided but not to be hunted down, and not the way I want to remember the dead-almost-a-year Author Helwig. I think my library system has at least one more book by him, and please Kalliope (Muse of Epic Poetry, close as the Greeks came to what we call novels) let it be better than this thing was.
I like these lines, though:
That's the last thing Author Helwig says in this book. He saved the best for last...?
The Publisher Says: Throughout his childhood, spent on the estate of the Randall family, Walter observed the charmed life of the very rich. He overheard their secrets whispered in the servants' quarters, and he saw the control they had over his parents who were domestics. For years he dreamed of escaping the subservience of that world, and finally he did. Now he is a professor, leading a comfortable and secure life as a member of the academic community. He is safe from the past.
Or is he? A young woman enters his life, one of his students. Spoiled, wealthy, a neighbor of the family his parents once served. Ada stirs up memories Walter would rather forget. As they become involved in a passionate yet destructive affair, another side to Walter begins to emerge. A more dangerous side.
Through the characters and situations in The Only Son, David Helwig explores the way power is exercised—socially, politically, and sexually. This is an impressive new novel from an author recognized for his dramatic, finely polished writing.
My Review: Tedious Walter, bastard son of rich, married roué-cum-rapist James Randall, does his daddy proud by raping a college girlfriend he "loves;" marries his childhood friend Eunice not long after, has a limp and dishraggy marriage to her and finds out as she lies dying of cancer that Randall raped her too; then gets it all back when he marries second wife, Wild Child Ada. She rapes him. Symbolically, anyway: she stabs him in a drug-fuelled frenzy. Then she leaves his philosophy-professor sad ass with her drug dealer, participates in the murder of a cop in Arizona (a world away in every sense from lawful, manicured Toronto), goes to jail, and Walter shrugs his harness back on to teach undergrads what he knows about Philosophy.
Fast forward one jail sentence. Ada shows back up, he lets her into his house, and they fall back into an easy friends-with benefits relationship while they figure out how to separate, better to say disentangle, their emotionless lives. Walter confronts rapist Randall's dying wife to see if she'll admit he got Walter's mom pregnant. Ada confronts her incestuous brother Michael, not to accuse or vilify him, but to get back together with him; he slings her out on her ear.
Walter gets nothing from senile Mrs. Rapist, I mean Randall. Ada gets some money from Walter so she can skedaddle. Fin.
Stodge through and through. In 1984, the year this was published, it was old hat; now it's older hat, without the lustre (see? I misspelled it like the Canadians do! I'm so cosmopolitan) of being retro. Blah, flavorless, not to be avoided but not to be hunted down, and not the way I want to remember the dead-almost-a-year Author Helwig. I think my library system has at least one more book by him, and please Kalliope (Muse of Epic Poetry, close as the Greeks came to what we call novels) let it be better than this thing was.
I like these lines, though:
I turn back into the house, and there is a moment of loneliness and loss, but if the love of wisdom means anything, it means that such moments pass, and it is what continues that counts.
That's the last thing Author Helwig says in this book. He saved the best for last...?
Displaying 1 of 1 review