The Girl with the Botticelli Face

Lisa Arsenault is a public-school teacher in Ajax, Ontario.

It’s difficult to summarize and assess this wonderfully complex novel
about a deeply troubled professor’s search for a troubled waitress
with a face the likes of which Botticelli painted. She is missing from
her Bohemian café, which is operated by other troubled people and
frequented by the professor after his regularly scheduled appointments
with his psychiatrist. Woven into the search theme are many subplots.
The irretrievable breakdown of the professor’s marriage is charted
against the backdrop of flashbacks to courtship and the first years of
marriage. Other recollections of the past reveal the reasons for the
wife’s—and, ultimately the professor’s—psychiatric problems; his
gradual return to mental health as he comes to terms with past traumas
is masterfully recounted.

The many and diverse characters encountered by the professor during his
search are richly drawn and believable. One of Valgardson’s strengths
is his ability to create fully defined personalities, both male and
female, in spare, unencumbered prose. Settings are similarly evoked in a
few precise lines. The author also possesses a fine sense of balance.
Some very funny vignettes lighten, at strategic intervals, the
essentially sad themes of abused childhood, divorce, and unfulfilled
quests.