Helen Keller in Love: A Novel (utgåvan 2012)

Besides the obvious, I really know very little about Helen Keller. What little else I know comes solely from a book report I did on The Miracle Worker in third grade. So yeah, I'm not exactly a font of knowledge on Helen Keller. The book appealed to me largely because of the historical fiction aspects. Historical fiction, when well done, is a beautiful thing, and one of my favorite genres.

Thankfully, Helen Keller in Love has been quite well done, or so I feel. I did some very limited research on Helen Keller (aka Google search) just to verify some of the basic facts, although I also could have read the Afterword first. I wanted to know, most of all, whether Peter Fagan was a real person, and whether this actually happened (unlike Becoming Jane). The answer is yes. Of course, the conversations and some of the finer details are a fiction. I just always like to have a decent idea of what is fiction and what is history, so that I don't walk around spouting 'facts' that are untrue.

What I liked most about Helen Keller in Love was most certainly the writing. Rosie Sultan's prose is beautiful. Her sentences aren't generally especially complex, but I love her diction and syntax. Her descriptions of what it might have been like to be Helen Keller, to hear through touch rather than sound, to imagine colors when you've never seen them, were breathtaking.

Most of all, the book, told from Helen's perspective, made me really truly try to imagine what her life was like in a way that just learning about her did not. She has such strength to have been able to live such a life. It's utterly sad how limited her life still remained though, a fact generally lost in the midst of the miracle.

I highly recommend Helen Keller in Love for lovers of well-written historical fiction or for those who like to think about the world from a different perspective. ( )

I first learned of Helen Keller's life beyond the famous “Water” moment (documented famously in the play and movie The Miracle Worker)through the book Lies My Teacher Told Me (by James W Loewen). Her then (and now it seems, based on the newest legislation coming from various states in the USA) radical views have seemingly been erased from the collective conscious, although she was a major voice for the legalization of women's suffrage, birth control, and other causes, speaking in rallies and on vaudeville stages across the country. When I received Helen Keller in Love, by Rosie Sultan, I immediately started it because Helen Keller's love life was something I had never read about. After reading Helen Keller in Love, I wish that still was the case.

Helen Keller in Love begins with Anne Sullivan, longtime companion of Helen Keller, becoming incredibly ill. To help Helen with her speaking engagements, read the papers, and do everything else that Helen can't do by herself, she hires Peter Fagan, an ex-employee of Anne's estranged husband. Helen quickly falls in love with Peter, eventually attempting to marry him, but her family and Anne put a stop to it.

I couldn't help but make comparisons to the Twilight series when reading Helen Keller in Love. Helen Keller, instead of being a strong woman of 37, acts like a dumb teenager. She risks throwing away her entire life for a man that she barely knows, that she knows already has a fiancee. Sultan's Helen has no depth, no dreams, no personality outside of barely defined Peter. I think I was supposed to relate to their love and root for it, but as an adult I cannot relate to the whiny self pity Helen feels for herself because her good friend and family are looking out for her best interests.

As a side note, Sultan sometimes forgets that her main character is both blind and deaf. Helen Keller in Love is told entirely in first person (Helen) and many details are given that Helen could not have known. Also, Sultan doesn't seem to factor in time, particularly in how long it takes to finger spell. Some moments have Helen holding conversations (through finger spelling) simultaneously with movements like getting dressed, which would be a near impossible feat to pull off and are jarring to read.

Jessica Pruett-Barnett, for
www.theliterarygothamite.com ( )

In Rosie Sultan’s debut historical fiction novel she tells a tale of a very brief love affair that Helen Keller kept very private. Although there is little known about the relationship between Helen and Peter Fagan the author imagines a very believable story. This is only a love story on the surface; underneath there’s a disturbing vision of the people close to Helen. Those people demand attention and control making her dependent to the point of helplessness. This becomes clear to her as her relationship with Peter deepens. Choosing between the love she desperately desires and the need of those around her becomes an emotional drama.
I love it when a novel awakens a desire in me to learn more. This was an emotional rollercoaster of a read for me. I didn’t want to dislike some of the characters, but I was so invested in the story that I couldn’t help myself. The flow and the pacing of the story were great and I found myself wishing that I could just sit down and read it through. Even though I know a few things about Helen Keller the author was so convincing that I had hope that it would end differently. I have no problem recommending this book. ( )

http://www.cozylittlebookjournal.com/2012/05/helen-keller-in-love-by-rosie-sulta...

Rosie Sultan's debut novel is a fictional imagining of Helen Keller's doomed love affair with Peter Fagan. The love affair itself was real, but Helen Keller never discussed her relationship with Fagan, other than to express regret that she never married, so there was a lot left to the imagination. Still, it's a daunting task to try to write a novel about someone so famous, not to mention someone who died less than 50 years ago. Many of us feel like we know Helen Keller, yet there is so much that we don't know. Rosie Sultan is not only attempting to honour Helen Keller the woman in this novel, she's also up against our collective impression of Helen Keller. On both counts, she does her subject matter proud.

Helen Keller in Love is personal enough to feel real, but ambiguous enough not to feel insulting to Ms. Keller's memory. For instance, she doesn't give Helen the voice of a bosom-heaving school girl. It's not that kind of love story. Instead, the first person narrative reveals a Helen who is smart, practical and direct. She is also someone who is in love and finds herself at odds with her family and those close to her.

Rosie Sultan's writing is compelling enough that this novel could easily stand on its own as a fictional love story about a blind and deaf woman named, say, Jane or Susan. It is not just historical fiction, it's literary fiction. But it also affords a glimpse into the inner life (or an imagined glimpse, a "what if") of an iconic woman.

Disclaimer: I received a free advanced copy of this title from the publisher, Penguin Canada, for promotional purposes. I was asked to write and share an honest review, though it was not required to be positive or favourable. The opinions expressed are strictly my own. ( )

I've been fascinated by Helen Keller my whole life, reading bio after bio after bio about her. While this book is a work of historical fiction, there is a historical base to it--Helen Keller did indeed have a short love affair in the fall of 1916 with Peter Fagan , a failed reporter who was hired to be Keller's assistant when Anne Sullivan became too ill with what was suspected to be tuberculosis. Keller was still relentlessly touring, a proud Socialist and against the war, donating money to blinded soldiers in any war even though she was broke and on the verge of losing her own home. At 37, Keller dared to dream of love and a family of her own, and Sultan images that, for a brief while, that dream nearly came true. This is a page turning story of family and political dynamics, a postcard of a time when women had fewer choices (especially if they were deaf and blind and extremely feisty) and the need of love that we all feel. I found this to be a fascinating and impressive first novel from a writer I will now be keeping an eye out for. ( )