Find Him!, the third novel by the late Elaine Kraf (I Am Clarence; The Princess of 72nd Street), explores her trademark themes of women's mental health and sexual freedom through a case of Stockholm syndrome.
The unnamed narrator arrives at Oliver's home an unformed adult in need of schooling in numerous subjects, including toileting and speech. As Henry Higgins to her Eliza Doolittle, he teaches her with much ingenuity and patience. Yet he is also capable of violence. She always feels like an intruder, or a replacement for Oliver's departed love, Edith, whose violet dress he likes her to wear. As the woman's naïveté cedes to precocity, their relationship turns sexual--but he only rapes her once, she insists. "He was the prince of men and nothing can change my mind," she declares, despite repellent descriptions: "You would think Oliver loathsome with his huge stomach, urine odor and... brown-clawed toenails." His project is an "Encyclopedia of Great Men" who typify the "frenzied idealist" (perhaps he counted himself one?); he claims to have met Adolf Hitler and corresponded with Vincent van Gogh.
The 1977 novel is obsessed with vision and language. The experimental mixture of forms--poetry, sheet music, letters from Edith--is typical for Kraf and gives temporary relief from a claustrophobic, repetitive narrative. Readers are kept guessing: Was the protagonist kidnapped? Amnesiac? Where is Oliver now? And what do these "evil investigators" want with her? Disturbing but intriguing, Find Him! would be an ideal follow-up read for fans of Liz Nugent's Strange Sally Diamond. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader, and blogger at Bookish Beck