Az- Envy: A Novel by Kathryn Harrison From The Washington Post's Book World Reviewed by Charles Taylor

There is something both tony and precious in Harrison's determination to shock. y
And when she introduces the possibility of incest into Envy, you feel as if she no longer even cares to convince us of her novel's reality. After revealing the incestuous affair she carried on with her father in her well-publicized memoir, The Kiss (1997), Harrison has no way to write about incest fictionally without it sounding like a rehash of her personal experience. y
I didn't find it this bad though:
Even without that development, there is enough to rob Envy of any claim to successful fiction, not least Harrison's writing-seminar symbolism. Will's wife has been unable to have face-to-face sex with her husband since their son's death; Will dreams of having sex with women while his face is shrouded in shadow; Mitch, his estranged twin, turns out to have a port-wine birthmark on his face. They're all vague and terribly programmatic symbols of shame and loss of identity. ...
Writers and critics who complain of the shrinking audience for literary fiction argue -- validly -- that huge advances and advertising budgets for blockbusters reduce the resources left to promote serious novels. But the chances of good literary fiction finding an audience are also damaged when books such as Kathryn Harrison's Envy are published and passed off as worthy. Ten pages of Envy are enough to make you yearn for the juiciest trash novel you can find; 50 will have you dreaming of box-top recipes, road maps, computer instructions -

Reviewer:

Jose Jones - See all my reviews

Having read all of Harrison's books, I can't recall her ever being overly worried about plot. But "Envy" is stacked with it. It brims over with shocking and explosive twists that fulminate like psychological bombs. There are two characters -- the main character's brother and a young patient of his -- who absolutely deserve their own books. I would personally love to see through their eyes. One is fascinatingly and purely evil and the other has mommy/daddy issues (and maybe just mental-health issues) so astounding she is a spectacular train wreck. oh, I tht she was the 'evil' one. she was pretty bad. but ok I guess he is more sociopathlike.




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