Excessive Joy Injures the Heart

Excessive Joy Injures the Heart is not everyone's cup of tea, but it is a work of genius nevertheless, it's so serene and original and powerful. It's even often very funny, and the humour is integrated into the work in the most natural way. I felt so full when I finished this novel, I felt it was perfect. Someone in a review I read somewhere (I think it was a poet) described Excessive Joy Injures the Heart as a book for connoisseurs of both language and psychology, and I agree. I have to warn some potential readers, though, that they might not like it. These might be the readers who are expecting something romantic. But then this is so often the case with brilliant novels, it's their fate to be misunderstood. There's no glib pap in this book, it's the real thing. And although it's a kind of love story (in the most iconoclastic and original way) there's nothing the least bit romantic about it.

Excessive Joy Injures the Heart is an incredible novel, it's so intelligent and funny and sad and deep. The two central characters, Claire and Declan, are also so cleverly polarized that they made me turn the pages quickly, wanting to know more. There are many terrific minor characters as well, among them Claire's sometime lover, Tony O'Bois. Who, when he asks Claire what "the fashionistas in the English department" are teaching their students these days, gets this response: "That identity is a bourgeois illusion, a construct created by material objects and ideology..." There's also such evocative and memorable descriptive writing, as the following quote should make clear: "A week later it turned hot, but there was still a leftover damp ache in the air from the morning's earlier rain as Claire sat with her friend Libi in Libi's kitchen. Libi yawned a fierce little yawn, a fist held up tight beside each of her breasts, then went over to the sink to fill up a kettle. The backs of her legs were pink with a sick flush of sunburn, and she was wearing one of her bright Mexican cotton skirts, this one a harsh red. It gave off the raw stinging new-crayon smell of cheap cotton." This is a novel that manages to be passionate and brilliant, but also engaging and ironic. And it is, consequently, worth every dollar and every minute you'll spend on it. Highly intelligent and highly recommended.

Review is from Rebecca Wright, an American studying at the University of TorontoTwo women walk into "the splashy bedlam" of a public swimming pool area, then feel the steambath warmth of the chlorinated air come toward them "across the sloshed tiles, in that great booming hall of hygiene." The strawberries that Claire Vornof (the protagonist of Excessive Joy Injures the Heart) hulls are "too hard, white-knuckled at their tips", and her refrigerator is so old that it creaks like a saddle. As for one of her blouses, a pale-green shell made out of shot silk, it "looks as if it's been left out overnight in a frost." I knew from the imagery in Elisabeth Harvor's Excessive Joy Injures the Heart that I was going to love its language, even though from the write-up on the book jacket I didn't think its story would interest me much. But as it turned out, I got hooked early on: the two central characters (Claire Vornoff and Declan Farrell) were polarized in a way that I found unusual and emotional. And by the time I'd reached the book's end, I had to conclude that Excessive Joy Injures the Heart--the title is from an acupuncture manual listing the effects of various emotions on different organs of the body--tells an incredibly electric and intelligent story, a story that also "dares to ask disquieting questions about the nature of attraction, about the responsibility for it, and the complicity necessary for two human bodies to hover, be lured, and to connect," as one of the review excerpts puts it. Even the book jacket (which was mostly pretty sappy) is absolutely right when it says that the novel is alert to the pathos of love's ambiguities. The writing has a whole lot of momentum too, and is really original and memorable. Harvor is a writer who really seems to understand both tragedy and tenderness, but she can also be incredibly funny. There's a scene with a naturopath by the name of Mr. Spaulding that made me laugh out loud. And so did the scene describing Mitchell Kinkaid giving Claire a yoga lesson. I also really admire the way Harvor so honestly and viscerally evokes the sights and smells of the real world, as in the scene with Mitchell where Claire hasn't changed since she got home from her job (at a medical clinic) and is afraid she might be smelling a "little too sour and female. Or at the very least of a medical scent from the disinfectant at work." Or this: "The aroma of fried bananas and the crash of surfy music--surf, and some kind of tinkling, imitation Bach" that greets Claire and Tony O'Bois as they come into a vegetarian restaurant. And then there are all those other scenes that just took my breath away: a weirdly scary scene in which two men in black caps and black windbreakers skate with their black dogs on a neighborhood pond well after midnight; a scene in a theater where a theatre balcony is described as "vertigo country, and how like a precipice a theater balcony is (don't wear high heels, don't lose your balance)..."And one last thi

I recently won a copy of _Excessive Joy Injures the Heart_ and ... what a pleasure! I completely lost myself in the world of Claire Vornoff. Harvor's novel is about a society obsessed with symptoms and obsessed with healing. It is about psychic suffering as well as physical suffering and about the quest for a cure for both. Alternative medicine is the novel's focus--a focus that is timely, original, and intriguing.The main character's complaint is chronic insomnia, but as the narrative unfolds, it becomes apparent that her real affliction is a grieving heart, symptoms of which include feelings of disconnectedness from her body. Originally from the prairies, Claire experiences a similar sense of displacement from her environment (an experience I found all too real as someone who grew up in Moose Jaw, SK and spent the better part of my twenties in London, ON). Although Claire participates in the society of the "civilized heart of formal Ontario" (201), she is positioned, essentially, as an observer, and her narrative gaze remains detached, ironic-- a benefit to the narrative.The premise of the plot dances dangerously close to cliche--a woman falls in love with her doctor. Or falls into something intense enough to take over her life and get her pretty bent out of shape. But Harvor is smart, and while she plays about the edges of this cliche, she never allows it to take over or foreclose rich possibilities of her narrative. Instead, the potentially corny scenario becomes, in Harvor's skilful hands, a strategic doorway to the complex emotioanl texture of her protagonist's journey through a year (or so) of "treatment" with Declan Farrell, a holistic specialist in "bioenergetic theory."Farrell, a dark, brooding Byronic figure who wears corduroy, treats his patients in his country home (formerly an Anglican rectory) outside Ottawa. One of the delights in Harvor's novel is her satirical treatment of the faddism surrounding alternative medicine in all its flaky, New Age splendor. Our culture is a veritable shopping mall of therapy options, Harvor's novel suggests. However, there is more to Harvor's narrative than its brilliant satire of New Age medicine; she has the ability to reveal her protagonist's ambivalent postion within a symptom-crazed culture. Claire is skeptical yet she tries it. Harvor's protagonist my be a patient but she is not a victim. Even though the line between therapy and romance gets pretty blurry in terms of Claire's relationship with Dr. Farrell, what compels us to read on is not the pseudo-romance as much as it is Claire's story as a narrative of resistance. No matter how "touchy-feely" alternative medicine claims to be, Harvor's novel reminds us, New Age doctors like Declan Farrell and Alan Breit ("a spooky gym class for one student") are not carving out any new territory when it comes to using their "expertise" as a weapon of power against their female patients.Claire is smart enough to realize that Declan is a coloni

I love Excessive Joy Injures the Heart. Claire Vornoff, the main character, in a slow and soft manner gets under my skin and stays there for the duration. As she moves from her day to day encounters with the city and other characters, her actions and responses speak to me of my own insecurities and sometimes found courage in an unpredictable landscape of love, friendship and family. There is Declan Farrell, her therapist, and the man she should not but inevitable does fall in love with. It is unsettling to observe him as he wanders dangerously from his role of trusting Doctor. And Libbi, the faithful, conservative friend who has a sharp eye for how things really are, Steadfast old Doctor Tenniswood, her longtime employer with the spoiled daughter and stuck-up wife. My favorite is Tony O'Bois, not Tonio Bois, the History Professor, who she keeps meeting in public places or parties that they both attend alone. It is difficult to forget these and other characters who interact with Claire's quirky life - especially her Toronto land lady, Dot.Harvor's writing style is gently hypnotic. As I turn pages I am absorbed in a rich, tangible world of imagery. And although Claire often lives in a dreamy space, the narrative keenly plots and surprises. We are allowed into a woman's life as she carves out a place for herself in her own unique fashion. Excessive Joy Injures the Heart speaks to us of our loneliness and foibles and our sense of ourselves. This is one of those books that at the end, you're very appreciative of the experience. And many scenes will stay with you for a long time. I highly recommend it!