By Sarah Lausi

Helen of Nowhere
Makenna Goodman
Coffee House Press (Sept. 9, 2025)
ISBN: 978-1566897358

Helen of Nowhere is a story that truly grabs you in such an interesting way. In between characters monologuing about the evangelical nature of plants or the various ways they have overlooked their wives, this surrealist novel is about a professor looking to buy a house in the middle of nowhere after losing his job and dignity. While the Realtor shows him around, she tells the professor about Helen, the home’s former owner. Slowly but surely, the professor becomes obsessed with his own idea of Helen and his own explicit interpretation of who she was.

With its monologue-like format, Goodman places readers straight into the characters’ minds; instead of the typical objective narration of how one person speaks to another, the curtain is fully pulled back, as we watch the story unfold through their eyes, hear their thoughts, their own biased perspectives of the world. This uncommon form of storytelling is truly engaging and works especially well for the complex characters that Goodman writes about. For example, seeing the professor’s unfiltered beliefs and how they affect his relationships with the others—his wife, the realtor, and of course, Helen,—is simultaneously a disgusting yet entertaining experience. Reading from the professor’s perspective is a twisted form of torture, to put it lightly; there are countless times throughout the novel that I had to either physically put the book down or show the excerpts of text to companions that were reading beside me. One such excerpt is: “My wife and I tried to do something about the chasm between us. We saw a therapist. A pathetic waste of time. We went to a tantric sex workshop in Iceland. It was cold. Everything, my wife said, was about me finding pleasure. No, I said, everything was about the dog” (25). Knowing that the professor’s wife was his former student makes me feel so genuinely uncomfortable in my own skin. This isn’t exactly a negative point in the story, however; I much prefer the seething hatred I feel for this man, rather than feeling nothing. Still, this does not excuse the fact that there is so much wrong with the professor, from his superiority complex to his hallucinogenic relationship with an elderly woman; I want to put him in a jar and shake him around until he is thoroughly concussed.

Beyond the characters themselves, there are a couple interesting themes that Helen of Nowhere explores, the most prominent one being self-perception and ego. One way this theme is presented throughout the text is via the idea of doers and takers. The professor introduces this idea early on in the first chapter, “Man,” where he explains that a doer is “a person who takes positive action to benefit others” (16), while a taker “thinks about how much they need, not about how their need’s fulfillment might affect others” (16). Despite everyone else in the professor’s life labeling him as a taker, the professor is convinced that he is a doer being overlooked and abused by everyone else. Because of how the professor’s self perception does not align with how others perceive him, the reader is given a couple different ideas about the state of his ego. Immediately, I assumed that he was just extremely disconnected from others, that he was just an egomaniac who believed he was better than everyone else. While this interpretation has sufficient evidence to back it up, I eventually came to the second conclusion that perhaps the professor’s ego is so fragile, that he cannot fathom the idea of being perceived in any way other than “a man so kind, so plant-loving, so mild-mannered” (19).

The other prominent theme in the novel is how gender tends to play a part within power dynamics. Like doers and takers, the idea of gender and power is described as anchors and kites. Wife explains the concept to the professor in the chapter “Helen and Man.” While the professor acted as a kite, able to live his life freely and without consequence, wife acted as an anchor to keep him grounded in reality. While this dynamic is not inherently harmful, “[wife] realized that while an anchor’s main purpose was to hold a ship in place, it wasn’t meant to solely anchor—it had every right, and in fact demanded to be pulled up from time to time to rest on deck and enjoy the feeling of the open air. This didn’t mean the kite had to stop flying, but at times it would have been nice for her to lay coiled on the deck without having to work so hard” (91). Here, wife is realizing just how much she has given up for the professor, having quit her research and dreams of becoming a professor herself just to stabilize his own projects. This experience is not unique to wife, as many women end up altering or sacrificing their own dreams so that they can settle down and begin a family. Meanwhile, the man may feel he has less household or familial responsibilities, allowing him the freedom to roam and continue exploring the joys life has to give. This fact gives the line “She was ready to be a kite, too, in fact” (91) so much more power, as wife attempts to regain her freedom by rejecting the role of an anchor and divorcing the professor.

Overall, Helen of Nowhere is an entrancing novel that allows us to explore complex themes through the perspective of four wildly different characters. The unique format combined with the eccentric characters and surreal story make it stand out against other books I’ve read in the past.