Some books are creep into the reader’s conscience like usual guests who have entered the room and whose presence, after a flurry of your own activity, you notice hours later. That happens rarely in real life, but a parallel happens throughout Gillespie and I (by Jane Harris) as Harriet Baxter, the novel’s narrator, dips in and out of the lives of the Gillespie family. Harriet is a well-meaning, kindhearted, single woman in an age where old maids were viewed with suspicion. Her sense of humor and her deep compassion help her aid her friends in the challenges they face, and, in some respects, protect her during her own challenges. Never once does Harriet complain of the loneliness and boredom of her life—as a single woman in her mid-thirties of independent means without family, and without a passion or an occupation, she drifts from interest to interest, latching onto whatever fascinates her most at a time—but the reader must wonder from time to time why her attachment to the Gillespies is so firm; indeed, she rarely mentions any other social acquaintance in her narrative.
This narrative shifts, from the late 1880s at the time of the Scottish Exhibition in Glasgow, to the 1930s in London where an elderly Harriet is writing, as she describes it, the story of Ned Gillespie, the artist who was never recognized as he deserved. The narrative begins with a focus on Ned as an artist, and follows him with a casual initial mention of his family as if merely to illustrate the background of his struggles. But swiftly the narrative leaves his art in the background and it is the Gillespies themselves—Ned, his wife Annie, his mentally-disturbed young daughter Sibyl, and his four-year-old Rose—who are the center of the story. They share that center with Harriet, who is always hovering about their home, first having her portrait painted by Annie, an amateur but talented artist of her own right, and then as a result of the friendship that blossoms during that work. But it is a friendship that we hear of only from Harriet’s perspective, and small signs—Harriet’s observation of Annie’s occasional impatience—hint that her life within the Gillespies’ world may not be as welcome as she’d like to believe.
We trust the narrator’s voice increasingly less each time she writes about the 20th century. While writing her memoir, Harriet struggles with suspicions about her maid, Sarah, whom she suspects to be a grown-up Sibyl in disguise. It becomes increasingly clear that Harriet’s obsession with Sarah’s “true” identity verges on the fringe of insanity, and the reader’s perception of that affects the next 1880s section.
A tragedy strikes the Gillespie family when young Rose is abducted from the street, unseen, and, of course, Harriet is in the midst of their search. (Spoiler alert) Months pass, and the child is not found, and Harriet thinks only of having the Gillespies come to the country house in which she is living where Ned can paint, Sibyl can run free, and she and Annie can be good friends. Sibyl, who was supposed to be watching Rose when her sister disappeared, has a history of disturbing acts (from drawing obscene pictures on the wall to dropping rat poison in the punch at a New Year’s celebration), twice attempts to kill herself, and is at last put in an asylum, a move that wrenches her parents apart.
Harriet has been a bystander—once who has continually nudged into all the action—all this time, but becomes central to the novel herself when she is arrested for Rose’s kidnapping and murder. I feared that the prison sequence would be tiring—neo-Victorian novelists are often too fond of prisons and asylums, settings that grow dull for the unsubtle horrors endemic within them—but the novel goes much deeper. As Harriet attempts to manage life in prison before her trial, we begin to wonder how innocent she truly is—not in Rose’s disappearance or murder, but in her meddling with the Gillespies’ lives. During her trial, we see full evidence of this meddling, learn how frequently unwelcome it was, and feel the slimy weight of her leech-like presence during the most difficult moments of their lives. But while we feel a degree of horror on behalf of Ned and Annie, it is accompanied by pity for Harriet, whose loneliness and empty life become all too clear.
Gillespie and I is a powerful story of utter loneliness. Early on, I wondered why it was set in the 1880s and 1930s rather than exclusively in the 20th century, but realized upon finishing the answer to my constant question for historical fiction of why that time: such loneliness was most powerful conveyed in the rush and glitter of the Scottish Exhibition and the busy city around it. At the end, it is not easy to like Harriet, but it is quite easy to empathize with her. Such a lonely life, with additional ramifications that the narrative hints at, make one willing to lend Harriet Baxter the company of one’s mind.
I think another reason the story may have been set in that time period is because it’s impossible to feel that lonely in the 20th or 21st century with telemarketers, text messaging, facebook, and twitter. Perhaps if Harriet were alive now, she’d be too busy tending her crops in Farmville and playing Words with Friends that she’d never have bothered the Gillespies.