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Harmony
Despite her comfortable life with a loving husband, Anne Mahroum is having trouble adjusting to the fact that her new baby boy, Evan, has been born with club feet, begins to wonder about her own mother and the strange circumstances of her childhood, and sets out to unearth the truth about her past. By the author of You Made Me Love You. Original.
- GenresFiction
368 pages, Paperback
First published June 5, 2007
383 people want to read
About the author
Joanna Goodman
9 books1,306 followersJoanna Goodman’s #1 Bestselling Historical Fiction novel, The Home for Unwanted Girls was released April 17, 2018 to wide critical acclaim.
Joanna is the author of four previous novels, including The Finishing School, You Made Me Love You and Harmony. Her stories have appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Ottawa Citizen, B & A Fiction, Event, The New Quarterly, and White Wall Review.
Originally from Montreal, Joanna now lives in Toronto with her husband and two children, and is at work on her sixth novel. She is also the owner of a well-known Toronto linen store, Au Lit Fine Linens.
Joanna is the author of four previous novels, including The Finishing School, You Made Me Love You and Harmony. Her stories have appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Ottawa Citizen, B & A Fiction, Event, The New Quarterly, and White Wall Review.
Originally from Montreal, Joanna now lives in Toronto with her husband and two children, and is at work on her sixth novel. She is also the owner of a well-known Toronto linen store, Au Lit Fine Linens.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 17, 2009
Ordinairily I don't believe in wasting time berating a stupid book for being stupid - if anything it deserves five stars for doing exactly what it sets out to do - but this one actually had potential so I feel the need to vent.
I picked up Harmony - despite the title - and was actually sure that this would be the potential winner from the dubious stack of library books. It is about a woman whose son is born with a defect and how she struggles with her feelings of shame and disappointment. That is a conflict I really appreciate and presents the often overlooked complex world of seemingly unconditional love.
Yeah. Well. If the author didn't write like a nine year old who occasionally swallowed a pop psychology text book, we might have something here. Instead, we have annoying and peurile Anne, who according to the goodreads blurb is "blessed wtih a loving husband" who is in fact a whopping jerk. He;'s loving about three times in the book, which Anne notes and in the novel's consistently 'tell don't show' style, makes sure to alert the reader that 'Elie was usually selfish and conniving but he had his moments.' So endearing.
Anne whines the entire novel about her son having club feet (I swear if I hear the term club feet one more time I will hurt someone, every character is obsessed with it and can't seem to talk about aything else or just call feet FEET) needing to be normal and have all the advantages of the rest of the world such that she ends up sounding like a pageant mom. THe melodramatic dialogue and inane narrative ("It was always like this with Anne and Elie. THey were like opposing teams, rather than one team, working together. They were more like two forces working against each other rather than together.") makes the whole issue of club feet seem less and less significant and more like some Nazi Aryan fixation.
Now I think club feet is pretty awful, but as the novel whines on and on about how people keep saying at least its not cancer and how much harder that makes feeling bad about it, I can't help but say, GET IT TOGETHER. The child won't run as fast but in life being able to communicate and process cognitively is probably a lot more key to success so suck it up and deal, will you?
Anne attends a support group (cue obvious ignorance to how support groups work and a slew of laughable stereotypes that only made it seem all the more pathetic) and happens upon the dashing Declan, and instantly entertains endless fantasies which up til now have been reserved for the UPS guys (maybe I need to move to Canada to understand this?) and this definitely does not help how unlikeable she is. While she pesters her husband about whether or not he is having an affair any time he comes late for dinner, she herself is engaging in a seventh grade style flirtation ('Is Declan late for the meeting tonight so he can keep me guessing as to whether or not he'll be here? It's so farfetched - but maybe - !') with a clear intent to take it to the adultery level, and in the meantime her husband is conveyed as a manipulative, greedy and selfish creep but somehow I am supposed to root for them both.
Add to the mix the mystery of Anne's whereabouts - her mother fled her community when Anne was a child and never speaks of why or who Anne's father was. Well it turns out she was living in a polygamous commune and was one of a dozen wives to her uncle so I guess that explains the club foot but for the life of me I can't figure out why that was included.
Anne's lukewarm relationship with her mother was actually funny though unintentionally so - it's clear Jean isn't too crazy about her daughter and frankly either am I.
THis totally stank. It was terribly written, overly crowded, histrionic and did not have a single redeeming feature.
I picked up Harmony - despite the title - and was actually sure that this would be the potential winner from the dubious stack of library books. It is about a woman whose son is born with a defect and how she struggles with her feelings of shame and disappointment. That is a conflict I really appreciate and presents the often overlooked complex world of seemingly unconditional love.
Yeah. Well. If the author didn't write like a nine year old who occasionally swallowed a pop psychology text book, we might have something here. Instead, we have annoying and peurile Anne, who according to the goodreads blurb is "blessed wtih a loving husband" who is in fact a whopping jerk. He;'s loving about three times in the book, which Anne notes and in the novel's consistently 'tell don't show' style, makes sure to alert the reader that 'Elie was usually selfish and conniving but he had his moments.' So endearing.
Anne whines the entire novel about her son having club feet (I swear if I hear the term club feet one more time I will hurt someone, every character is obsessed with it and can't seem to talk about aything else or just call feet FEET) needing to be normal and have all the advantages of the rest of the world such that she ends up sounding like a pageant mom. THe melodramatic dialogue and inane narrative ("It was always like this with Anne and Elie. THey were like opposing teams, rather than one team, working together. They were more like two forces working against each other rather than together.") makes the whole issue of club feet seem less and less significant and more like some Nazi Aryan fixation.
Now I think club feet is pretty awful, but as the novel whines on and on about how people keep saying at least its not cancer and how much harder that makes feeling bad about it, I can't help but say, GET IT TOGETHER. The child won't run as fast but in life being able to communicate and process cognitively is probably a lot more key to success so suck it up and deal, will you?
Anne attends a support group (cue obvious ignorance to how support groups work and a slew of laughable stereotypes that only made it seem all the more pathetic) and happens upon the dashing Declan, and instantly entertains endless fantasies which up til now have been reserved for the UPS guys (maybe I need to move to Canada to understand this?) and this definitely does not help how unlikeable she is. While she pesters her husband about whether or not he is having an affair any time he comes late for dinner, she herself is engaging in a seventh grade style flirtation ('Is Declan late for the meeting tonight so he can keep me guessing as to whether or not he'll be here? It's so farfetched - but maybe - !') with a clear intent to take it to the adultery level, and in the meantime her husband is conveyed as a manipulative, greedy and selfish creep but somehow I am supposed to root for them both.
Add to the mix the mystery of Anne's whereabouts - her mother fled her community when Anne was a child and never speaks of why or who Anne's father was. Well it turns out she was living in a polygamous commune and was one of a dozen wives to her uncle so I guess that explains the club foot but for the life of me I can't figure out why that was included.
Anne's lukewarm relationship with her mother was actually funny though unintentionally so - it's clear Jean isn't too crazy about her daughter and frankly either am I.
THis totally stank. It was terribly written, overly crowded, histrionic and did not have a single redeeming feature.
August 26, 2020
I read this book because I liked the Finishing School so well. All I can say is Whew!!! It was about a perfectionist mother who has a child with club feet. This was interesting to me because I have a couple of friends that have grandbabies that had this defect. I learned the complexities of dealing with and curing this disability. It is definitely a long road of trial and error, surgeries, and pain for the little one--so heartbreaking!!! There were two other subplots (marital infidelity and secrets about her mother's past) used to distract from the original storyline. Although, I did like trying to figure out whether or not Anne would have an affair with her support group buddy, and what was so terrible about her mother being raised Mormon; there were too many directions for the mind to go! I didn't hate it, but thought this would have been better as three separate books.
July 17, 2017
Extremely annoying and unlikeable characters and boring plot.
February 4, 2018
Ugh. Long, boring. Main character is annoying. Not this author's best work at all. I enjoyed The Finishing School.
June 21, 2021
I found the main character self centred, self absorbed, and unforgiving and judgemental... too concerned with perfection, 'normal'..... almost felt repulsed by her.
July 13, 2022
Picked up for a trip. It’s a look at how a mother struggles after her child is born and not “perfect”. I would have been a lot more curious about my childhood than this woman seemed to be.
February 24, 2023
Just loved this, really enjoyable, believable, mindless, fun.
November 24, 2016
My first Goodman book -- perhaps my last. This book is about several things: a mother who has a child with club feet and cannot stop whining and complaining. Nothing the doctor says is right or suits her at all. Then it's about how she is longing to have an affair, just because she thinks she can and thinks the man can't resist her. THEN as if the author needs to get one more thing in, it turns out that her mother was once a plural wife in a rogue Mormon settlement. Enough? Well, there's more, but read it yourself to find out.
August 12, 2009
This book tried to be too many different things. The story about the mother dealing with her son's disability and her own reactions to it was interesting enough: I didn't need the two other sub-plots (marital infidelity and the mysterious events of the mother's own youth) as a backdrop. This was kind of like three books in one, but I really only wanted one.
June 8, 2008
Four chapters in and I just feel like it's an absolute chore to read this book. The main character needs to just stop whining. God she's annoying.
I cannot finish this book. I just cannot.
I cannot finish this book. I just cannot.
February 28, 2008
Fantastic book, a must read.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews