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Excessive Joy Injures the Heart

Name: Excessive Joy Injures the Heart
Author: Elisabeth Harvor
ISBN: 9780151008940

by Elisabeth Harvor

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Overview

Anxious, insomniac, and adrift in her life, Claire Vornoff drives out into the country to become a patient of Declan Farrell, and an education of sorts begins. An iconoclastic practitioner of alternative medicine, Farrell is magnetic and unsettling, and Claire tries in vain to resist him. As she dreams her way through her life, all the while refusing to listen to her friend Libi's dire pronouncements, her attachment to Declan Farrell deepens, and soon she finds herself caught up in a series of unexpected and startling events.
Set mainly in Ottawa and Toronto, this stunning novel charts the anatomy of obsession, capturing along the way the dilemmas of contemporary urban life. Harvor creates an erotically charged atmosphere, always alert to the pathos of love's ambiguities. Bold, original, astute, and above all deeply human, Excessive Joy Injures the Heart reveals things about us we didn't know we knew. This is truly an outstanding debut.

Synopsis

Publishers Weekly

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. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

About the Author, Elisabeth Harvor

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.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Library Journal

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 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A New Age first novel by Canadian Harbor, a poet and short-story writer (Let Me Be the One, 1997), about a young woman who becomes obsessed with her reflexologies. Mad, driven passion can take on a universe of forms, but it usually leaves its victims feeling rather pleased with themselves in the end-possibly because they made it out alive, possibly because they fell apart so spectacularly in the first place. In this case, narrator Claire Vornoff begins in the traditional way, unhappily ensconced in the quietly depressing routines of daily life. Claire works as a physician's assistant and takes courses in literature and psychology at the university. Originally from the rural plains of Saskatchewan, she lives by herself in Ottawa and hasn't had sex in more than two years. In order to find relief from her persistent migraines, she visits Declan Farrell, a practitioner of alternative medicine. Declan, married and a father, is somewhat distant and peremptory, his sessions consisting of a combination of massage, acupuncture, and some more esoteric exercises (like biting on the caps of shampoo bottles). Claire doesn't know what he's trying to achieve with her, but he has a captivating manner-"When you were a little girl, something made you open your eyes much too wide. You tried to see everything all at once and you ended up seeing not very much. My guess is that you let people push you around"-so she continues to visit him weekly and even learns how to drive so as to see him at his center in the countryside. Much goes on in Claire's life: her father dies, she has sex again (with a history professor from Carleton University), nearly gets pregnant-and she falls in love with Declan. Though thisconfuses her, she moves to Toronto eventually. And, at end, something very sad happens, and Claire learns a lot about herself and the world. Foolishness: a Harlequin romance written by Andrew Weil.