Excessive Joy Injures the Heart - Hardcover

Harvor, Elisabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151008949 ISBN 13: 9780151008940

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002

Synopsis

Lost, anxious, and adrift, Claire Vornoff heads for the country to seek the care of Declan Farrell, an iconoclastic practitioner of alternative medicine, as her growing attachment to Farrell soon begins to deepen into obsession, in an erotically charged novel that captures the nature of obsession, the challenges of contemporary urban life, and the ambiguity of love. A first novel.

About this title

About the Authors

Elisabeth Harvor is the author of several collections of short stories and poems,
and the winner of the Alden Nowlan Award. Excessive Joy Injures the Heart is her first novel. She lives in Ottawa.

Elisabeth Harvor is the author of several collections of short stories and poems,
and the winner of the Alden Nowlan Award. Excessive Joy Injures the Heart is her first novel. She lives in Ottawa.

Reviews

Canadian short story writer Harvor (Let Me Be the One) casts a cool, observant eye on an aberrant facet of romantic obsession in her debut novel. Claire Vornoff is in her late 30s, ambiguously single (separated permanently from her husband). She works as a nurse/receptionist for an Ottawa general practitioner, while taking literature classes at a university. Lonely, unmoored and plagued by chronic insomnia, she consults an acupuncturist and holistic healer, Declan Farrell, to whom she confesses that she's "just a little bit obsessive." As Declan's piercing, intrusive questions penetrate Claire's protective layers of emotional numbness, she develops an obsessive need to be with him. Declan is a Lawrentian figure, alternately sympathetic and brutal, honest and condescending, who betrays flashes of violence beneath his arrogant assurance. In some respects, he frees Claire from her limitations; she learns to drive a car so that she can drive to Declan's compound outside Ottawa, where Declan lives with his wife and children. Trying to break free of her feelings for him, Claire has a sexual encounter with a man she meets at a party. Afterwards, when she asks Declan to determine whether she is pregnant, she feels an even greater level of intimacy with him. Even after she has seen the corruption in Declan's New Age-y soul, Claire feels drawn to him, and only after a terrifying, physically abusive session does she gain the strength to terminate their relationship. In lucidly charting Claire's emotional and erotic attachment, Harvor is reminiscent of a classic novelist of another generation, Christina Stead and, like Stead, Harvor has a masterly grasp of the psychological states of women on the margins of society.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Claire, a young divorced woman suffering from insomnia (and, from the reader's point of view, a massive case of self-absorption), is the center of the debut novel by acclaimed Canadian short story writer Harvor, author of Let Me Be the One (1997). Claire works in a doctor's office and is studying for a graduate degree in literature, but neither of these occupations engage her with the level of fervor attendant on her search for some sort of alternative cure-all medical treatment. Declan Farrell becomes her therapist and emotional focus, but their intense and unorthodox relationship has little if any effect on her symptoms. Claire's perception of color and smell seem heightened, a state reflected in her descriptions of and reactions to the world, and these passages provide the book's most defining moments. It's surprising that even though her problems aren't solved and, ultimately, the reader's knowledge and understanding of Claire remain limited, she is nonetheless captivating. Perhaps in novels, like therapy, it's the process rather than resolution that matters. Danise Hoover
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Harvor's first novel follows Claire Vornoff neurotic, self-involved, and passive through a series of entanglements with vile and opportunistic men. Claire suffers from a host of nebulous ailments, including insomnia, dizziness, and anxiety. In search of a cure, she traipses from one New Age charlatan to another, each of whom exploits her without much protest or even notice on her part. She falls in love with Declan Farrell, a holistic body worker with wandering hands and a talent for emotional manipulation. Their relationship sputters along without much direction until Claire finally breaks free. Several months later, she learns that Declan has committed suicide. All of this could make for an interesting book, but it doesn't. Claire's pallid, dreary tale is unleavened by inspired writing or a fresh perspective on romantic relationships, and her endless credulity is painful to witness. Further, Harvor's language is loose and melodramatic, with countless random, awkward metaphors introduced and promptly abandoned. By the end, what little has actually occurred seems trifling and self-important. Not recommended. Karen Munro, MLIS student, Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Because the storekeeper is wearing a white butcher coat, he makes her think of a movie she went to with her husband once--back in their married days--a movie in which a butcher (who was also a psychopath) courted a beautiful woman with fresh cuts of meat. He would appear outside the little schoolhouse where the woman was giving lessons to her students, the newly sawed leg of some animal wrapped up in pink butcher paper, a florist's twist where its hoof would have been. The memory of the shock she'd felt when what she had taken to be a bouquet of flowers appeared, in the camera's close-up, to be a crude rosette of red meat instead of red petals, makes her almost jump when Habib bows to present her with a bouquet of actual flowers.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151008949
• ISBN 13: 9780151008940
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336