Synopsis
Katherine Dexter, scientist and suffragette, desperately seeks the help of psychiatrists to cure her husband, Stanley McCormick, of his schizophrenic and sexual deviations. 80,000 first printing. First serial, The New Yorker. Tour.
Reviews
In Boyle's assured hands, this odd American tale turns into a bracing examination of misogyny, mental illness, and the shadowy side of love.
Division and separation are the dominant themes of Boyle's dark-hued and deftly plotted seventh novel, which bears strong incidental resemblances to his earlier World's End (1987) and The Road to Wellville (1993), though it displays a richer Dickensian brio throughout. The title denotes a California mansion built on the spot where a growing acorn had split open a boulder, thence attaining full maturity. Which is more than can be said for Stanley McCormick, who might be called this novel's agonist. He's the youngest son of millionaire Chicago inventor Cyrus McCormick; a ``neurasthenic'' young man driven by a chaos of terrifying formative experiences into a state of sexual dementia so uncontrollable that he must be restrained in ``a world without women,'' under the watchful eye of a physician who studies the social habits of lower primates. Stanley's doctors come and go, over the years, but despite unpredictable intervals of lucidity he remains locked away and guarded, most faithfully by his ``head nurse'' Eddie O'Kane, a likable roustabout who has his own problems with compulsive behavior, and women. We follow the story of Stanley's long incarceration, beginning in 1912, through Eddie's sometimes glazed- over eyes. In parallel narratives, Boyle entwines with it the dispiriting tale of Stanley's haunted youth and deranged manhood, and also the story as lived by his wife Katherine Dexter McCormick, a strong-willed and accomplished beauty, still a virgin decades after her wedding day, who has sublimated her unfulfilled love for her husband among what Eddie angrily dismisses as ``birth control fanatics and blood-sucking feminists.'' The issues that divide the emergent century and the gulf that separates the sexes thus frame, and memorably echo, this big novel's narrative and emotional core: the craziest love story imaginable, but a love story nevertheless- -one that chills the bones as you read. Vintage Boyle: a freakishly inventive black comedy, populated with irresistible eccentrics, that leaves a bracing and bitter aftertaste. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
When Stanley McCormick, the brilliant but highly strung son of the inventor of the Reaper, marries Boston socialite and MIT graduate Katherine Dexter, the papers call it the wedding of the century. But the marriage is never consummated, and after a disastrous honeymoon, a catatonic Stanley is moved to Riven Rock, a prisonlike mission in Santa Barbara. Diagnosed as a schizophrenic sex maniac, Stanley is to be kept entirely separate from women, including Katherine, who may speak to him only by telephone. Katherine goes on to become a major figure in the burgeoning suffrage movement and even smuggles a steamer trunk full of contraceptives into the country in support of Margaret Sanger, but she never divorces her husband or gives up hoping for a cure. Riven Rock resembles The Road to Wellville (LJ 3/15/93) in its send-up of medical quackery in the early years of the century, but here the fact-based love story takes precedence over satire. This affecting and surprisingly mature novel is Boyle's best book since Water Music (1981). Recommended for most fiction collections.
-?Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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