“Many of the residents here are not equipped for life as it is commonly regulated,” reflects the narcissistic, madly distracted yet profoundly cultured narrator Helen near the end of this captivating, strange novel by New York author Lynne Tillman (who writes novels, short stories and criticism). Least of all this clever ex-historian whom I took to be Tillman’s realisation of a postmodern successor to such endearingly digressive women as Winnie from Beckett’s Happy Days or Joyce’s Molly Bloom.
That said, our heroine most resembles Ronnie Corbett, who in his weekly monologues on The Two Ronnies would go off on multiple tangents before concluding apologetically: “But I digress.” Helen is like that: a digressive flaneur through a mindscape seething with fixations on chair design, textile manufacture, the Zulu language, Kant’s account of mental ailments, how parasitical fleas prey on kittens in Amsterdam and lots more. Helen reflects repeatedly on one of the Manson murderers, Leslie Van Houten, seeing in her fate, perhaps, something of America’s capacity for evil and refusal of redemption. She also obsessively recalls her mum killing her beloved childhood cat because the cat killed Helen’s parakeet. Unlike Ronnie Corbett, though, Helen never stops digressing long enough to find time to apologise for her self-indulgences.
