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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
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The House of Gentle Men
Reviewed by Cara Bobchek
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Best Little Whorehouse Somewhere in the Louisiana backwoods, a middle-aged father has finally got it all figured out: The world is not a happy place (it’s World War II, after all); men are largely responsible for this unhappiness; men make women unhappy; and if women were happier, the world would be happy. Certain he has the cure for the world’s ills, this man makes himself into a madam, opening the House of Gentle Men. His theory is that the greatest pain that men bear is the weight of the pain they have caused women, and that a man in pain will continue to cause pain. At the House of Gentle Men, the weary male workers distribute the antidote to the local housewives nightly, based on the premise that men can ease the pain they bear from being brutes and egomaniacs not by victimizing women, but rather, by cuddling them. |
 The House of Gentle Men Novel by Kathy Hepinstall Hardcover - $15.40 Published February 2000 Bard Books |
Kissing their hands. Telling them they look pretty today. Complimenting their perfume. Pretending to be their lost soldier-sons. Anything goes, so long as it’s sweet and does not involve penetration.
Kathy Hepinstall’s first novel revolves around the story of Charlotte, the local crazy lady, who has been mute since she was a teenager. Nobody knows that Charlotte was gang-raped in the woods by three soldiers who were training in Louisiana before being sent to win the war. She became pregnant, left the baby on a stump to die, and stopped having anything to say.
Years later, one of the rapists returns to Louisiana from the war, suicidal over what he has done to Charlotte. He signs on at the House of Gentle Men because he’s heard that this is where a man might be cured of his pain by curing women of theirs.
Sure enough, Charlotte turns up at the House, having received the equivalent of a gift certificate from her best friend and rival, Belinda. The rapist recognizes her, but she does not recognize him, having been blindfolded during the rape.
The rest of the plot deals with these two sad souls’ search for their own kinds of redemption. It’s fair to say that they each get that and more.
This is the kind of story that might have been born from a dream or perhaps from a coffeehouse conversation among women. Ms. Hepinstall’s fable immediately evokes Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, though in a decidedly post-feminist voice. The post-apocalyptic themes in each are clear, though Atwood’s apocalypse is in the future, while Hepinstall suggests that World War II was apocalyptic enough to leave behind its own clutch of survivors in need of healing. The House of Gentle Men is also neatly bookended by nothing less classic than Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, which featured noble rapist Howard Roark and his lovely victim Dominique.
If the plot twist in this fine novel is a bit obvious, the book nevertheless has some delicious sub-plots. Most notable is the character of Benjamin, the 15-year-old son of the House’s proprietor who is not buying his father’s theories whatsoever. Benjamin therefore camps in the sweet potato barn away from the main house and makes love to the so-called satisfied, freshly cuddled women who creep home from the House in the wee hours to their pathetic husbands. When Benjamin falls in love with an abused (of course) married woman, he is transformed: he turns to the Gentle Men to teach him what women really want. But Benjamin knew already what his Belinda (yes, Charlotte’s rival) wanted, and it wasn’t a kiss on the hand. At least somebody in this tired town is having a bit of fun!
The House of Gentle Men is the right length. Ms. Hepinstall’s writing style avoids being too self-conscious, and unlike her forbears Atwood and Rand, she doesn’t patronize. From this first effort, it seems that our future in Kathy Hepinstall’s library promises some original and interesting characters and an able and literate structure. And I’ll bet she makes great conversation in the coffeehouse.
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Cara Bobchek is a writer in Washington, DC. As of this summer, she needs both hands to count the number of Elvis Costello concerts she's attended.