Excessive Joy Injures the Heart

by Elisabeth Harvor

When she begins to have trouble sleeping, Claire Vornoff drives out into the country to become a client of Declan Farrell, and an education (of sorts) begins. An alternative practitioner and an iconoclast in the medical establishment, Farrell is magnetic, unsettling, and Claire is both beguiled and skeptical as she tries to resist his ability to get through to her. As time goes on, her attachment to him deepens, reinventing itself over and over. But when she has a brief affair with a married man things escalate, setting in motion a series of startling and unexpected events. Astute, compassionate, and alert to the dilemmas of contemporary urban life, Excessive Joy Injures the Heart charts the tricky anatomy of obsession, and brilliantly captures our neverending quest to remedy the aches in our minds, bodies, and spirits.

Genres: Fiction, Canada

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Erica Elisabeth Arendt Deichmann, known as Elisabeth Harvor, was a Canadian short story writer, poet, and novelist.

Reviews

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and sometimes engrossing character study. Claire is
obsessively in love with Declan, and goes to sometimes strange lengths to
get close to him. Harvor's writing style varies from intense, moving, and
mesmerizing to boring and unsatisfying (and everything in between), but the
good parts are very, very good. This is her first full-length novel after a
number of volumes of poetry and short stories. She's worth watching.

My favourite quote has a wee bit of a spoiler, so stop here if you don't
want to know....

SPOILER

SPOILER

SPOILER

"She was so longing for him to drive faster that she kept tensing her feet
to urge him over the speed limit. She knew that her father was dead, but
she wanted to get to him in time to say goodbye to him before he died. This
didn't make any sense, even to her, but her feet believed it." (p. 47)

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stick to her stories. The novel is based on a terrific short story, "How Will I Know You?" but the novel is long, baggy and cumbersome (tiresome). As a friend noted, "What Harvor does so well in her stories: the accretion of detail, of well-observed moments, doesn't translate to the novel."

[Elaine Robinson LaBar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Did not like this book at all. The author created a lead character who is totally neurotic and self-obsessed, desperately searching for something but never quite sure what. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen but the plot went nowhere. And this author is the queen of run-on sentences, some of which went on for so long, I forgot what she was initially trying to say and had to back track. The first rule of a good author is to be kind to your readers and this author definitely wasn’t.

[Barbara Burrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

A well written debut novel, but it was a struggle for me to get through it. The first third of the book was enticing but it quickly lost steam. Claire's thought process was all over the place. Who wants to constantly read about her 'what if's.' Really! The character Declan, could have been so much more than just a mealy mouthed therapist. Too much of the information was only divulged at the very end.

[Katrina Curik · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do not know why (or how) i managed to read the whole book considering nothing at all happens. The book is approx 350 pages but has nothing to offer in terms of plot, or well articulated analysis on obsessions. The back of the book said things “escalate” but seriously nothing of interest happens in this book.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like this might be a bit "of its time" (early 2000s) - it's definitely a pre-MeToo book. Claire is a mess, oddly obsessed with her unethical therapist, deeply depressed and insecure. It's interesting to be in her head, but not particularly pleasurable.

[Leanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

They say never judge a book by its cover, in this case I was guilty of judging a book by its title. And I was sorely disappointed. There was no excessive joy, and I was never convinced that her heart was actually injured.
Claire claims to be very happy at points in the story, but I never bought it. It felt like a lie she was telling herself. Like a teenage girl with a crush, she tells herself she's in love.... But it simply does not ring true for me. . She comes off as desperate and wholly pathetic and incapable of real, " grown up love". And when one would expect despair to set in, beyond initial shock, she seems no worse for wear.
As some reviews have already said, this book is a bore. Claire is a bore. Nothing happens....at least not until the end, where we are provided resolution to a narrative that never really took shape.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Arghhh... This book is painful. I finished it, though, triumphantly I finished it. Nothing happens. I felt like an insomniac reading it, dredging though the overly cerebral passages. The author is a good writer, but I think that this book needed more direction/editing/feedback or something to allow the author to better flourish.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit too stream-of-consciousness for my taste. I'm sure it's fine, but just not my speed.

[Melinda Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

A stream of consciousness book I could have done without...