The Cure

by Varley O'Connor

“An old-fashioned novel, in the best sense of that phrase, elegantly wrought, hardheaded, and tenderhearted.”—Michael Chabon on A Company of Three “A first novel that soars.”— The New York Times on Like China As America emerges from the Depression, the Hatherfords build a comfortable life just outside of New York City, in rural Bergen County, New Jersey. They are a glamorous Vern is the charismatic owner of a successful Ford dealership, and his flamboyant wife Maeve is beautiful even in middle age. When their three-year-old son Scott falls prey to polio, and later, another son must go to war, their marriage slowly implodes. In the midst of it all, twelve-year-old Patsy steals swallows of whiskey and tries to make sense of the world around her, which includes an unusual intimacy between her brother Scott, and Julian, a young African American boy who lives among them. Neither historical nor medical fiction, The Cure offers the pleasures of both in its richly complex portrayal of the lives and times of its characters. A beautifully written family saga about race, war, childhood illness, and romantic desire, The Cure has at its heart wounding and the struggle for hope. Varley O’Connor is the author of A Company of Three (Algonquin, 2003) and Like China (Morrow, 1991). She has taught writing at Hofstra University; Brooklyn College; University of California, Irvine; and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She has been an actress for television, theater, and film and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Novels, Fiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Varley O’Connor’s first novel, Like China, described by the New York Times as “a first novel that soars,” was published by William Morrow in 1991. Her second novel, A Company of Three, about the world of theater and acting, came out from Algonquin Books in 2003. Her third novel, The Cure, was published by the Bellevue Literary Press in 2007. Scribner will release her most recent novel, The Master's Muse, in May 2012.

Her short prose has appeared in Faultline: Journal of Art and Literature, AWP Writer’s Chronicle, Driftwood, Algonkian Magazine, The Sun, and in an anthology, Naming the World and Other Exercises for Creative Writers, edited by Bret Anthony Johnston (Random House, 2008).

After graduating with a BFA in acting from Boston University, O’Connor worked as a stage, film, and television actor before entering the Programs in Writing at the University of California, Irvine. She received her MFA in English with a fiction emphasis in 1989.

She has taught writing and literature at Irvine, Hofstra University, Brooklyn College, Marymount Manhattan College, the North Carolina Writers’ Network, and thrice for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers’ Summer Conference, most recently in August 2007.

In fall 2007 Varley O’Connor joined the faculty at Kent State University, where in addition to undergraduate creative writing, she teaches fiction and creative nonfiction writing in the Northeast Ohio Universities Consortium MFA program.

Reviews

[Stefanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Varley was one of my favorite professors ever. She truly has such a way with language. But this book didn't work for me. Too firmly literary fiction.

[Glenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is gorgeous, unforced poetry and raw emotion in Varley O'Connor's “The Cure.” Dialogue in particular brilliantly moves action forward--not always the case, even in good books--by giving us a better sense of each individual, through how they express themselves, and how they try to veil what they cannot express. In particular she gets the need for limit-testing and wide-eyed exploration of youth; and how, at times, the end of that exploring pushes beyond where they'd ever thought they could go. And how, even when people become adults, and have gone through the fires of adolescence, it's no guarantee they'll come close to understanding their own children.

She also reveals character through memory; characters look back on their actions, what motivated them, going back into their own histories, reckoning tragedy and loss, looking for comfort, when they felt at peace with the world, while simultaneously burnishing and peeling away layers, both fighting and getting closer to the truth. When they look back on what had gone wrong, hurts caused and endured, she writes, with an almost unbearable ache, “That's what people did, carefully built up their lives, their homes over years, over generations, and tore them to pieces.”

There are wonderful evocations of setting and place; the objects on a table, for instance, or the brief paragraph describing the house in Paterson, New Jersey where Vi grew up that takes up family, home--both in the physical sense and in the emotional and spiritual sense--work conditions for the working poor and the ill-health that environment creates...and never gets in the way of the beauty of the language, which shines through no matter how grim the detail.

She writes with poignancy of long-unrequited love; in the words unspoken, and acts unconsummated due to seemingly old-fashioned ideas about honor, decorum and one's place in society. In “The Cure,” Varley O'Connor gives us a memorable family, one she binds us to throughout the book.

[Terri · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was so frustrating to me. I really wanted to like it. Too much happens without enough character development, and it ends up feeling a bit like a melodramatic film--maybe like Written on the Wind. There are some nice descriptions of place, and a few little images that made me stop and take notice. For example: "The sun was strong yet the air was brisk, a core of warmth with a coolness floating across it, a brilliancy in the air so sharp that its touch on their faces, their hands, nearly sounded the ping! of a gold ring tossed in a glass." But those moments weren't enough to elevate the whole book. The dialogue didn't work that well for me. I just couldn't relate to these characters most of the time. Their situations were ripe for reader empathy, but alas... A really great book from a really great writer can make me relate to characters with whom I have almost nothing in common on a superficial level. I wanted that from this book, but it just didn't deliver.

In fairness, I read this right after reading The End of the Affair. The depth of emotion conveyed just wasn't even in the same universe.

[Wajahat · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book interesting especially the poetry...