“But what happened to Patrick?”
“Nothing happened to him. He’s a little hero,” said Elspeth, allowing a smile for the boy who looked something like Stanley. She was pinning clothes to the line—her own, James’s, and mine—and they hung there like versions of us in the cold, fresh air.
I had known nothing about Ned Kowalski until then, but as the story unfolded, I saw Patrick, silent wisp of a boy, lurking by the garbage cans at the corner as I stood talking to David and Suzy.
He was watching us, the way he’d spied on us at the beach and maybe in all sorts of other places. When I ran, I ran right past him. The truck tires squealed and I fell, skin scraping against the pavement. Patrick was the first to get to me. He stood over me, wishing. My eyes were closed, and he held his breath until he saw the vein in my neck moving. I was alive. People pushed past him and crowded around me, and Patrick ran and jumped into the water, plunging down to the cab of the truck. The window was open and the cab was full of water, and Ned was crammed against the steering wheel. Like a fish, Patrick floated in. Finger by finger, he loosened Ned’s grip on the wheel, then pushed and pushed with his hands and feet until the body was released into the river. They floated to the surface, as though something pulled them up. Patrick saw the sky beyond the waterline as he rose and burst through. There were others involved then—a fireman and the baker’s wife and a bank teller—but it was Patrick Malone who’d saved a life. A fountain of water plumed out of Ned Kowalski, and it looked just like the stream a whale shoots forth. The man was breathing, and the little boy dripped a trail of water as he moved away from the scene.
It was a Friday when James veered from his postal route to visit Iris. I never work Fridays, he remembered her saying with a hint in her voice. I’m always home Fridays. True to her word, she was. She didn’t let him in, though. She stood at the door with the chain on and peeked out at him with a grim eye. He muttered his apologies in the drab hallway, a light flickering above him. It would have to be good enough. He kept his voice low, in case the other apartments had ears, and when she didn’t respond, when she didn’t say anything more than “Is that all?” he decided it would be wrong to ask her if she planned on telling anyone about their affair, namely Elspeth. They stood for a moment not speaking, and he saw that she began to blink more rapidly. He put his hand through the crack to touch her shoulder, but Iris pushed the door against his fingers, and opened it only enough to allow him to slink off down the hallway, worrying his sore hand. He felt blood swimming up to a fingernail, and he was actually grateful for the wound. The carpet in the hallway was stained, he noticed, with years of traffic. A gray smudge discolored the center, and led off to each little home. He followed the main path and took himself outside, closing a chapter behind him.
Whether she would tell remained to be seen. Would he tell? he wondered, wandering home. He wasn’t sure. Perhaps one day, but not now, and whether that was because he was cowardly or because it was just the wrong time to layer on pain and grief, he didn’t know. He was less afraid of confessions than he had once been, but he better understood their complexity. If he confessed, it had to be for Elspeth’s sake rather than to assuage his guilty conscience. It was she, more than he, who mattered. Unless of course you asked her. Then it was he, more than she.
She had returned to work at the factory, with red-haired Iris and the rest, minus Margaret. There were no swaths of fabric mysteriously slipped into Elspeth’s bag these days, and Elspeth supposed she should have acknowledged the gifts at the time. At break, among the others, she took out her knitting and set to making a pair of socks from her leftover bits of wool, working the thickest strands into the toes and heels—James’s socks always had holes there, where his skin shone bright and vulnerable, but he never complained. As the women chatted, the non-pattern spun out in rows of yellow, blue, red, gray, black, green. And in making something so wild, so at odds with herself, Elspeth often thought back to her father’s toes after the first war—his heavy, damaged feet resting in her mother’s lap while the radio sent out dramas in the evenings. The Flowers Are Not for You to Pick. That was one whose title had stayed with her, though she could no longer remember the story line. Wasn’t it amazing, she thought, that even in deepest winter, James’s feet were always warm when they came up against hers beneath the covers? Night after night, his warmth radiated toward her.
Chapter 12
Even now that I’m a grown woman, no one can really say for certain what will happen, or when, though chances are the oldest woman in the world will never be the tallest woman in the world, and vice versa. So for now I keep going, like anyone, moving through the years as long as the years will have me. Every summer I pick cherries and every fall I pick apples and every winter I tell schoolchildren what it’s like to be me. Sometimes I ask them, “Well, what’s it like to be you?” And they giggle and shrug, but I can see them thinking. My big body is only my container, I tell them, and my real self always looks out through the eyes.
Of my darkest and brightest days I don’t say much, but I think of them often. Sometimes I step outside my yellow room, rise to my full height, and take a giant’s view of those days, and the town with its snaking river, bridges arching over as in London, England. Straight across from the school with its bell clanging is the factory, where most of the baker’s goods get eaten by the working women. The socks are here, too, getting longer and louder at each coffee break. Out on the street, the man who will wear them delivers the mail as the man on the back of the garbage truck rides past him. Each nods to the other. Logging trucks move in two directions past the shops and the angle parking and two thick tree trunks, like the legs of a giantess. The florist sweeps her walk, daydreaming. And then, there I am, soaring by on my bicycle.
It thrills me to see myself so happy, with all of my future still ahead of me, however short or long it might be. There is no yellow string around my handlebars. It was dirty and frayed and had served its purpose. I look like a normal girl as I coast along, hair flying. A girl who loves bicycles and wind and the smudge of pencil-gray on paper. If I had to be known for anything, it would be those three things. People are always less and more than they seem. The Finnish giant grafted apple trees, and the Texas giant wrote poems, and the Willow Bunch giant lifted but also loved horses. The Missouri giant, Ella Ewing, was somehow radiant with her sticking-out ears and her bun on the top of her head. She liked to read and embroider, could play guitar and milk a cow, make butter, ride horseback, and hunt eggs, though not all at the same time. She was human, after all. A part of the ordinary world.
When I was small, the ordinary world was a land of giants. Everywhere I went there were tree-trunk legs and voices calling, Hello, down there! I remember watching my mother eat toast in great half-circle bites, and asking her, “Mum, do mouths grow?”—certain mine would never be so huge. I stretched my arm up to hold my mother’s hand and took three steps for every one of hers, looking down at her long, narrow feet in black shoes. I stood against the doorjamb while my father measured me and marked the spot I had reached, each increase a cause for celebration until the day he refused to measure. My mother scrubbed the lines away, then my father painted over the faint remnants. I kept returning to that spot, staring at the blank space for any evidence that might shine through to me. What was it like to be so small? The loose exhilaration as my father slipped his hands under my armpits and swooped me up to the dizzying sky. And then I was riding on his shoulders, with my mother’s careful hand around my ankle. I remember that. The powerful feeling of being raised so high that I could see farther than those who lifted me.
Acknowledgments
It’s hard to say where an idea begins, but one early inspiration for this story came from the Diane Arbus photograph Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, N.Y., 1970. Eddie Carmel stands in stark contrast not just with his mother and father but with the lamp shades with their plastic covers, and the pleated curtains, and the chair covered by a wrinkled throw. Th
e mundane scene is utterly transformed—and also illuminated—by the presence of the giant.
Over the years I spent creating Ruth, an entirely fictional character, I learned about many other people who’d grown to great heights, and whose stories helped me imagine what it must be like to have such a striking physical difference. My thanks to Jenny Carchman for the National Public Radio documentary about Eddie Carmel, The Jewish Giant; to Bette J. Wiley for Our Miss Ella, the story of Ella Ewing; Dan Brannan for Boy Giant: The Story of Robert Wadlow the World’s Tallest Man; and John Kleiman for Cast a Giant Shadow: The Inspirational Life Story of Sandy Allen. I am also grateful to Kalervo Myllyrinne and Ovila Lespérance for making the stories of their respective uncles, Finnish giant Väinö Myllyrinne and Saskatchewan “Willow Bunch Giant” Edouard Beaupré, available online.
Though I have played with the details, the account of Anna Swan’s escape from the burning museum comes from the New York Tribune, July 14, 1865. The advertisement describing Charles Byrne on view is taken from Edward J. Wood’s Giants and Dwarfs. The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body is my retelling of the Norwegian fairy tale collected by Asbjørnsen and Moe. The line about Gog and Magog “set forth in all their ugliness” comes from George Puttenham’s The Arte of English Poesie, and the idea of Ruth “opening out like the largest telescope that ever was” and finding her rapid growth “curiouser and curiouser” pays homage to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The giantess Mrs. Yoop is directly quoted from L. Frank Baum’s The Tin Woodman of Oz. The book’s closing was inspired by a quote from John of Salisbury: “Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.”
Thanks to Hugh Cook, Julie Trimingham, Heidi den Hartog, Samantha Haywood, and Robyn Read, for being such insightful readers. And to my husband, Jeff, for all our rich discussions about Ruth and the triangle of mother, father, and child.
The writing of this book was generously supported by the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS
READING GROUP GUIDE
the GIRL
GIANT
Introduction
Part coming-of-age story, part portrait of a marriage, The Girl Giant is set just after World War II and tells the story of Ruth—a young girl who quickly and inexplicably grows into a giant. An only child and an outcast among her peers, Ruth spends much of her time alone. But Ruth possesses an extraordinary gift: a mysterious insight into the inner lives of those around her, including her parents, who struggle to protect their giantess daughter from the constant stares and whisperings of the world, while wrestling with the trauma of their own pasts. At once heartbreaking and uplifting, The Girl Giant explores the complexity of difference.
For Discussion
1. Early on in The Girl Giant, Ruth says, “But something good can come from even the most terrifying things. For everything that is taken away, something else is given.” Do you agree? Discuss examples from the novel.
2. Is there something universal about Ruth’s isolation or otherness? Did you identify with any of her insecurities, hopes, or fears? Did Ruth’s awkwardness remind you of any events or feelings you encountered in your own adolescence?
3. Ruth has the mysterious ability to see into the emotional lives and dark secrets of her family’s past and present. She even describes what it was like to be in utero. Why do you think she possesses this power? In her case, is this knowledge a blessing or a curse? Can it be both?
4. How is James and Elspeth’s marriage both challenged and enriched by Ruth’s size and their concern for her? Do they work well as a team? Why or why not?
5. What problems do James and Elspeth encounter that have nothing to do with Ruth’s condition and everything to do with their own baggage brought with them throughout their lives?
6. Even before Ruth started growing, her parents were anxious for her. How does Ruth’s condition exemplify the universal concern that all parents have for their children, no matter their height?
7. How do the various stories about other giants, both real and imagined, relate to Ruth’s life? How does this mythology frame her experience?
8. Ruth’s height enables her to see the world from a different perspective—literally. How does it do so figuratively as well?
9. Discuss James and Elspeth’s marriage. Consider James’s affair with Iris, Elspeth’s background, and the following quote in your response: “But then if there had been no war, he would not have been with Iris, cheating on Elspeth, because he never would have married Elspeth in the first place.” How do the events that took place during the war and at Dieppe cast a shadow on their relationship? Was it a flawed relationship to begin with? Why or why not? Do you believe James and Elspeth ever truly loved each other?
10. Throughout The Girl Giant, Ruth acknowledges that her size makes her capable of great harm to other people. Why do you think Ruth never acts on this knowledge? How does this self-awareness frame Ruth’s interactions with her peers and her parents?
11. When Ruth first meets Suzy, Ruth is very lonely, and it is clear how much she wants to befriend Suzy. Why do you think Suzy was interested in Ruth? Did you anticipate that their friendship would end badly?
12. Ruth says: “Right then I understood that there are categories for love, the way there are languages within all language, and currencies of money.” How would you categorize Ruth’s love for Suzy? Was it a crush? Pity? Sheer gratefulness to have a real friend?
13. Discuss the characters who witnessed Ruth’s accident: the florist, the woman with the cake, the boy who worked in the record store, Ned the truck driver, Suzy, and Officer McCaul. How did their accounts and reactions to the accident differ? How were they similar? How would the reading experience have been different if this scene was told exclusively from Ruth’s perspective?
14. Did the medical explanation James and Elspeth received about Ruth’s condition change the mythical nature of her character? Why or why not? How did this touch of science change the trajectory of the story?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Kristen den Hartog writes that much of her inspiration for The Girl Giant came from a Diane Arbus photograph titled “Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, NY, 1970.” Print a copy of the photo and discuss with the group your reactions to this iconic photo in light of reading The Girl Giant. For more representations of Diane Arbus’s work, visit www.diane-arbus-photography.com.
2. Consider listening to the Sound Portraits documentary of the “Jewish Giant,” which can be found at www.soundportraits.org/on-air/the_jewish_giant/.
3. Discuss what you think it would feel like to be a giant, like Ruth. If you’re a parent, discuss what you would do if your child were a giant.
4. If you are interested in reading more about giants, consider the following books: The Giant’s House by Elizabeth McCracken, The Giant O’Brien by Hilary Mantel, and The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker.
A Conversation with Kristen den Hartog
You’ve written that one of your inspirations for The Girl Giant was the Diane Arbus photograph, “Jewish Giant at Home with His Parents in the Bronx, NY, 1970.” When did you first see it? Why did this particular image speak to you?
I’ve known about that photo for a long time, so when I was writing the book I kept thinking of it and searched it out. I love how ordinary the background is and how ordinary the parents are, but the son rising up changes everything. The image inspired me because of the size of the boy in relation to his parents, but more importantly it reminded me of that feeling when you first have a child—you never imagine how monumental the experience will be until it happens to you. And as a new parent, there’s this sense of, Oh, this is just the beginning.
The research and the writing happened in tandem. Once I’d decided to make Ruth grow, I realized I needed to know how her condition would feel for her, what it would look like, and how it would be responded to medically during the time the story was set. At the same time, I didn’t want to lose the magical quality of the storytelling and the sense of the child’s viewpoint. So blending the two—real and make-believe—seemed the ideal approach. In the end, it created a character rooted in both those worlds. And I was amazed to discover the similarities between actual giants and fairy-tale giants: the physical features, the deep voices, the mood swings, the vision problems.
In The Girl Giant you describe many of Elspeth and James’s concerns and anxieties about Ruth in a way that feels universal for all parents. How has your own experience in raising a daughter informed your characterizations of Elspeth and James?
I think it’s because I’m a parent that I so badly wanted to include the parents’ perspective in this novel. That sense of responsibility we feel for our children is phenomenal. I can relate to Elspeth following Ruth to school and longing to fix every little thing for her, even though I know it’s not the right thing to do for a child in the long run. I remember, before we had Nellie, how we thought our lives would carry on in more or less the same way, and she would tag along with us. And then when she came, even though she was a tiny baby, she was ENORMOUS in the way she took over. We were a bit blindsided by her.
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