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Envy by
Kathyrn Harrison
(Review: December 2005) Kathyrn Harrison
has made a career out of fucking her father (and I do not say this lightly).
In Thicker Than Water, a novel allegedly based on actual
occurrences in her life, there¡¯s father-daughter sex, and in her memoir, The
Kiss which pretty much covers the same ground, Harrison serves up the
¡°true¡± dirt. (Harrison waited to pen The Kiss, until most of
the principals who could either refute or corroborate her assertions, had
died. Her father is alive but is a recluse who refuses to talk to the media.)
In both books, the taboo situation is presented in a piquant, provocative
manner¡ªthe heroine¡¯s a young woman who consciously ¡°reconnects¡± with her
father. In The Kiss, the sex is presented as consensual, less
so in Water. What¡¯s intriguing is why Harrison feels the need
to keep coming back to the subject so publicly? Is it a form of therapy that
I should lend sympathy to, or shameless moneymaking sensationalism that I
should find repugnant? Back to the review. With Envy,
Harrison finds her self back in familiar territory. Yes, a woman in her 20s
has sex with a man who may be her father. He¡¯s also her shrink. Make that her
former shrink. And that¡¯s just a background tidbit. What¡¯s at the forefront
is unclear. Or make that, clearly muddled. Is it sibling rivalry, fate and
karma folding back on itself, a couple repairing itself after the death of a
child, or just a midlife crisis cum masturbation fest? It¡¯s pieces of each,
but none of them amount to anything because the characters at the heart of it
aren¡¯t real or interesting and the situations they are placed in seem
manufactured only with the intent to shock. The poor sod at the
middle of Envy, William Moreland, is a 47-year-old
psychiatrist. He returns to Cornell for his 25th reunion. There (a
strange and forced detail) he learns that he may have a 25-year-old-daughter.
Based on Harrison¡¯s lifelong (and career making) daddy obsession, you can see
where this is heading. Will¡¯s also married, has a daughter, just lost a son
and has a twin brother, Mitch, who¡¯s graced the cover of Sports
Illustrated. Mitch also has a wine port stain on his face that would make
Mikhail Gorbachev cringe. He¡¯s been estranged from Will since Will¡¯s bachelor
party. Will¡¯s wife won¡¯t look at him when they have sex, Will¡¯s dad proclaims
an open marriage and so on the dirty laundry falls. It¡¯s provocative at
first, but as the mystery unfolds, none of the characters is all that
likeable and worse, their likenesses seem to be everybody and nobody at once.
In short these people don¡¯t exist and if they did, you wouldn¡¯t want to know
them. Worse, the revelations
and concluding twists are insipid, tacked on, implausible and come too fast.
Any titillation that Harrison has mounted is reduced to a tepid bowl of slop.
Harrison is a gifted
writer, her language employed in describing inner, emotional conflicts and
scenes of sexual entanglement are poetic, concise and hit the mark. But as a
storyteller she only has one story to tell, and no matter how many ways she
twists it, the shock has worn off and her convoluted machinations rip through
the veneer of her lush prose with barbarian subtlety. - TBM |
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