The Bleeding Heart

by Lionel Shriver

In each of the hot spots she favors around the world, Estrin Lancaster manages an apartment, a job, and a lover, leaving at the first sign of boredom. she becomes involved with a man who also flees domesticity, but his efforts to escape have not been quite as successful as hers....

Genres: Fiction

427 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1990

About the author

Lionel Shriver's novels include the New York Times bestseller The Post-Birthday World and the international bestseller We Need to Talk About Kevin, which won the 2005 Orange Prize and has now sold over a million copies worldwide. Earlier books include Double Fault, A Perfectly Good Family, and Checker and the Derailleurs. Her novels have been translated into twenty-five languages. Her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. She lives in London and Brooklyn, New York.

Author photo copyright Jerry Bauer, courtesy of Harper Collins.

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Americans embarrassed her. They made no distinction between what came into their heads and what came out -- an endless stream of petty desires and ill-examined impressions dribbling from a hole in the face, the affliction amounted to mental incontinence" (6).

Estrin Lancaster is an American ex-pat living in Belfast, where she disassociates from other Americans and works in a local bar called The Green Door. It is on a distillery tour that she meets Farrell O'Phelan, who makes a hobby of dismantling bombs and who owns a local hotel. The late '80s of The Troubles in Ireland make for a rich, dynamic background for their relationship.

This book may be difficult to get through; the history and the conflicts described are not readily known to the average American reader. I know that I was unfamiliar with most of the places, events, and names that served as the background for the story. This is one of Shriver's earlier novels, and is a little heavy handed, although her characters are intense, and symbolic use of sexual imagery to describe Estrin and Farrell's relationship is spot-on.

"There is a trick to avoiding obligation that he had sorted out early. Maybe on Mother's Day flowers are in order, a card, a call. Those are the rules. But you can escape through a wee loophole: I am like this. All you need to do is establish early on that you are Not the Sort of Person Who Calls on Mother's Day, and lo, you are not. Expectation can be trained to zero. If you are Not the Sort of Person Who: goes home at Christmas, returns phone calls, responds to letters, or 'keeps in touch,' there is no discussion and, surprisingly, no anger. There may be rules, but it is not so difficult to make it clear that these are for other people" (218-219). -- Farrell O'Phelan

[Ruth Seeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very glad I helped a friend find this out of print Lionel Shriver novel as it meant I got to read it next. Having said that, the first two thirds were a bit of a struggle to read, as if Shriver was trying too hard and not exactly succeeding in capturing what life was like in Ulster in the late 1980s. But she redeems herself in the last third of the novel, primarily by refusing to provide a happy ending, which would have been totally implausible.

This may be one of Shriver's most 'disaffected' and anti-American novels. But the question she poses is a valid one: if you don't feel at home in the country of your birth, what are the chances you will ever be able to feel at home anywhere?

[Lizp · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Bleeding Heart is about love and conflict groupies set to the backdrop of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Estrin Lancaster fears domesticity with a passion, and has travelled worldwide to avoid it. Farrell O’Phelan is a malign opportunist. This book is outstandingly written and is well worth reading.

[Charlotte Tressler · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, as I love everything other Lionel Shriver book I've come across, but I got bogged down in the deep dive into Irish politics and couldn't make any connection with the characters. I stopped reading on page 105.

[Kim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Got to page 75 and gave up. Very inside Ireland, couldn't get into it.