false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167543445m/24732.jpg 24732 16 In 1905, Stanley McCormick, heir to East Coast millions, is most definitely mad. Heredity and an early, horrifying glimpse of his naked sister have rendered him schizophrenic, incapable of being around women--right down to his wife, Katherine, "a newlywed who might as well have been a widow." Not even the dawn of modern psychiatry can save him. Instead, he's barred and carefully cosseted in Riven Rock, the California estate he helped design for his sister, the first of the McCormicks to crack. Will the 31-year-old patient be cured? His wife, the first female graduate of MIT, believes that he will. So, too, does his loyal head nurse, Eddie O'Kane, a preternaturally articulate, handsome Boston Irishman. Indeed, Eddie thinks himself blessed with good luck. Going to Montecito to care for Mr. McCormick will, he is convinced, enable him to take center stage in the drama of his own life. <p> Over the next 20 years, Stanley will go from catatonia to a semblance of normality (so long as there's no woman in sight and no sharp cutlery on the table). Eddie, however, will never play the leading role he'd envisioned, instead taking refuge in alcohol and recollections of the one woman he thinks he has let get away, the plainspoken, explosive Giovannella Dimucci. When Eddie first describes his patient's violent response to women, "he wondered if he'd gone too far, if he'd shocked her, but the mask dissolved and she leaned in close, her hand on his elbow. 'Sounds like the average man to me.'" As for Katherine McCormick, she will still visit every Christmas, hoping to at least see her husband if she can't see him get better. <p> Based on a true story, <i>Riven Rock</i> is unclassifiable, a discomforting and often hilarious mix of tragedy and comedy. (Only Orson Welles could do the book justice on film.) T. C. Boyle writes in a controlled frenzy of rich description and dialogue, pulling us up sharply each time we begin to wonder if his patient isn't a helpless victim. Eddie recalls one nurse before Stanley "got to her": "She was a shadow in a back corner of his mind, a cat you pick up to stroke and then put down again when it stops purring.... Now she was back in Rhode Island, with her mother, but the look of her that day, the way her eyes had melted away to nothing and the color had gone out of her so you could see every lash and hair on her head like brushstrokes in oil, came to him in infinite sadness." <p> Boyle has great empathy, but there is no avoiding his novel's comic energy. Stanley's first psychiatrist-jailer, Dr. Hamilton, is obsessed with primate sexuality and will go to Riven Rock only if Katherine funds a large living laboratory. He spends all of his time watching the imprisoned creatures copulate, a pathetic counterpoint to his patient's plight. The sight of the disheveled doctor following one animal encounter amuses even the suspicious Katherine. "To his credit, the doctor laughed too. And O'Kane, the bruiser, who'd gone absolutely pale at the tiny hominoids that couldn't have weighed a twentieth of what he did, joined in, albeit belatedly and with a laugh that trailed off into a whinny." Alas, all goes awry when Hamilton takes the joke too far and declares his chimps "the very devils--they're even worse than my patients." <i>Riven Rock</i> is a maximum-velocity study of love, primal energy, and what is sacrosanct in society: control. It is also about loyalty, absurdity, domesticity, and depravity, all of which, Boyle knows, coexist within the best of souls. 1261974 1997 Riven Rock total:519|5:88|4:184|3:191|2:43|1:13| 519 1848 694 56 4 0 false false Sun Sep 06 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 04:28:44 -0700 2009 Sun Sep 06 10:47:47 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jul 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 22:19:14 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 14 22:52:03 -0700 2009
The surroundings play a large part in this story, almost as important as the characters. There is a...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Mon Dec 10 18:11:52 -0800 2007 Mon Dec 10 18:39:49 -0800 2007 3 0 false false Wed Jul 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 30 17:10:20 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 30 17:18:05 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Wed Dec 31 02:23:38 -0800 2008 Mon Mar 16 05:28:14 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Apr 13 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jan 23 04:20:53 -0800 2008 Sun Apr 13 06:14:14 -0700 2008 Riven Rock was a deeply satisfying read.
The characters, so complex, sad and human, pull the reader into their motivations and spirals. You can track their highs and lows, and see...more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Feb 12 12:55:25 -0800 2008 Tue Feb 12 13:07:08 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Feb 04 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue May 12 08:34:26 -0700 2009 Tue May 12 08:38:59 -0700 2009 This author is one of my favorites, but this may be my leas...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Mar 22 20:27:19 -0700 2009 Sat Mar 21 08:15:11 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 22 20:27:19 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Jun 27 08:28:40 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 27 08:39:21 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Wed Nov 11 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 09 07:21:07 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 11 12:14:40 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Thu Nov 13 06:45:52 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 13 06:49:44 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Aug 12 21:57:00 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 12 22:00:57 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Wed Dec 26 17:56:36 -0800 2007 Wed Dec 26 18:10:55 -0800 2007 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Jul 12 12:26:15 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 12 12:30:38 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 08 10:15:37 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 09 15:20:38 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Tue Sep 04 23:56:28 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 04 23:56:28 -0700 2007 more...]]> 0 0 false false Mon Apr 27 00:09:44 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 27 00:10:25 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Mon Nov 03 20:51:01 -0800 2008 Mon Nov 03 21:02:33 -0800 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Wed Jul 08 13:10:51 -0700 2009 Mon Jul 13 18:09:51 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=24732