Barbara Gowdy has made a career out of writing about unusual subjects—from exhibitionism and necrophilia to the travails of elephants. The 56-year-old’s latest novel, Helpless, is no departure. Set in Cabbagetown (where Gowdy resides), it’s about the abduction of a nine-year-old girl by an appliance repairman. Told from multiple perspectives, Helpless continues another Gowdy tradition: the quest for understanding, even of the unspeakable.

When you’re writing about the city in general or your own neighbourhood, are there key aspects of the place that you’re trying to capture?

Well, you always want to capture the particular nature and mood of the neighbourhood. I happen to live in Cabbagetown, so it’s like looking around and describing what I see. It doesn’t take a whole lot of research. I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for 10 years now, and I walk every day, so I’ve walked all through the streets and the farm. I go to the farm a lot and look at the animals, which is mentioned in the book, and I get my nails done at a place not unlike Angie’s Nails in the book—that’s a made up name.

Is walking part of your creative process?

I walk for exercise, and to see various flocks of birds that have come to depend on me over the years. My mind does wander. Sometimes I’m thinking about the writing and sometimes I’m thinking about a jingle from a commercial and sometimes I’m thinking about what I’m going to eat for supper. Whatever enters my mind. There are lots of dogs in this neighbourhood, and, although I don’t have a dog, I’m a dog lover, so I really enjoy walking down to the park by the zoo. It’s an off-leash dog park. I know the names of most of the dogs—not their owners—and I just like to see them.

Do you have any pets?

I have a cat. I got her from the Humane Society and she was really violent. When I got her she’d been kicked and had her ribs broken. She attacked me for the first few weeks every time she could, especially when I was lying down at night. As I have no doors— I live in an open concept house—I had to put a glass and metal screen around my bed to protect myself at night, rather than cage her. Within a few months, she was fine; that was eight years ago.

There’s been some consternation lately about the lack of “great Toronto novels.” Is there something about the city that doesn’t suit fiction?

I don’t think so. A lot of Toronto writers grew up in other places, and you need a long lead time between living somewhere and writing about it. I think we’ll be getting more and more books set in the city. It was very easy for me to set this book in Toronto because it wasn’t so much about the location. It could be set anywhere. In fact, the Germans want to do a television show about Helpless, setting it there.

I’ve heard you’re very popular in Germany.

I don’t know why. I have a very good publisher and translator, and that helps. But I would read there to perfectly quiet audiences, especially with my earlier stuff, which was described as funny. Then at the end, when they would come up for book signings, people would say, “That cracked me up.”

When did you first become interested in Helpless’s theme of abduction?

I was thinking, what’s the worst thing that can happen to a person? For me—and I don’t even have children—a child’s disappearance would be the worst possible hell. I decided I would tell it from the points of view of the abductor, the abductor’s girlfriend, the child and the child’s mother, to better understand the impulse in the story. That’s why I couldn’t make Ron a monster. He is not your typical abductor.

Did you ever worry that you were walking a fine line between creating a vivid character and letting Ron off the hook?

I wanted the reader to understand him, not necessarily feel sympathy for him. And for the reader to understand him, I couldn’t make him a monster. He had to love Rachel as a human being, not just as a little girl. So he was faced with a moral dilemma: love over lust. I think a lot of readers, especially female readers, will read the end first to make sure Rachel’s OK. I would do that. In suspense novels, I always read the end first to make sure that the characters I become invested in survive. I can’t bear it otherwise.

Doesn’t that take away some of the enjoyment?

If it’s a well enough written book, it’s how you get there that matters. Just as in life. We all know we’re going to die, but how are we each individually going to get there? I think I’ll be murdered by someone who’s yelling at me about feeding the birds. We’ll get into a terrible fight. I’ll be shot defending birds.

That’s horrible!

Oh, people hate it when I feed the birds—especially if I feed pigeons. I mean, I don’t feed them near homes, I feed them at the very back of the park. I don’t feed them every day and I only feed them in the winter. But people just get apoplectic.

You make a lot of Rachel’s beauty in the book. Why is beauty important?

The reason she needs to be beautiful is so that Ron isn’t just attracted to little girls. Ron considers himself a connoisseur of young female beauty, an aesthete. And so he sees an exquisite beauty, and that’s what is attractive to him. Her smallness and youth are also attractive, but there had to be something beyond that, to make him less disgusting (I don’t like to use that word) but to make his attraction to her understandable, from his point of view, anyway. I also wanted to talk about power: the shift of power, the power of desire, the power of beauty—beauty has a huge hold, a huge power—and also how power shifts. In the book, he has the initial physical power, but the emotional power pretty quickly shifts to her, and she senses that and exploits it. As beautiful children do.

They know.

They know. They don’t quite know why they have it, but they know.