The Blind Side Of The Heart
by Julia Franck
Nomination: Dublin Longlist 2011
Date Read: August 19, 2022
Blind Side Of The Heart focuses on the relationship between a mother and her son. Specifically, how do you parent a child when your life and the world literally tilt sideways. Do you focus on the greater good or sacrifice your own child? This is at the heart of Franck’s critically acclaimed novel.
At the end of the war, Helene is informed that her estranged husband is not coming back to her. With nobody and nothing left to lose, Helene rides with her son to a train station, tells him to wait on a bench and never returns. How could a mother make this decision, let alone actually follow-through on it?
Helene and her sister Martha grow up in the country with a mentally unstable mother and a largely absent father. Because of the rejection by their mother, who cannot surpass the sons she lost in childbirth, Martha and Helene are close. They are close in every way you can imagine. I was surprised that the incest between the sisters didn’t alarm me as much as it should. I could understand how they were looking to each other for comfort.
These inauspicious beginnings shed some light on Helene’s formative years. During her mid-teens, Helene and Martha are invited to visit their Aunt Franny in Berlin and the visit turns into a permanent living situation. In Berlin, Helene meets Carl and they fall madly in love with each other and plan to marry. One afternoon, when they ae scheduled to meet at a café, Carl just doesn’t show up. Helene soon learns that he was in a fatal accident and her world comes crashing down.
Over time, Helene’s life moves on and she is aggressively pursued by Wilhelm, who I instantly dislike. He is pushy, arrogant and demanding with little right to be. Nevertheless, the war is moving forward and although Helene doesn’t really want to marry him, he is able to provide her with papers attesting to her Aryan heritage. On their wedding night, their marriage is destroyed when Wilhelm discovers Helene is not a virgin. I had to take deep breaths here and thank my lucky stars I live in the present.
As the war continues to ramp up and rage on, Wihelm essentially abandons Helene and Peter. Helene’s training as a nurse is so much in demand that she spends days at the hospital without going home to see Peter, who is left at home alone. Facing this reality, Helene determines that leaving Peter at a train station with a note to Wilhelm’s brother and sister-in-law is better than him remaining in her care.
The sad part of this is that Helene attempts to reestablish communication when Peter turns 17 and Peter hides the entire time she is there. The reader isn’t privy to her reaction of leaving the aunt and uncles farm without seeing her child. I can only imagine heartbreak.
Comments
Post a Comment