Envy : a novel /

Harrison is a high-wire memoirist and a probing and inventive novelist. Her sixth novel, an intoxicating work of psychosexual suspense, portrays a New York family wracked by tragedy, some of it obvious--the accidental drowning of a young boy--much hidden. Harrison writes commandingly from a male psychologist's point of view, and much of the heady power of this harrowing tale is rooted in the fact that none of Will's powers as a perceptive therapist help him understand how his stoic wife copes with their son's death, or recognize that secrets are being kept from him. Yet Will's instincts are sharp. He wonders if the 24-year-old daughter of an old girlfriend is his. He is unnerved by his retired veterinarian father's transformation into a celebrated photographer. He obsesses about the subterranean, perhaps malevolent, aspects of his relationship with his identical twin, Mitch, identical, that is, except for the port-wine stain that disfigures Mitch's face. A world-famous long-distance swimmer, Mitch has been estranged from his twin and their parents for 15 years, ever since Will got married. Will is finally pitched into crisis by a new patient, a stunningly audacious, spiked and tattooed, viciously intelligent, foul-mouthed, and sexually rampaging young woman. Harrison's dialogue is electrifying, the sophistication of her psychology is mesmerizing, and her characters, so astutely drawn, are bewitching. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2005 Booklist

William Moreland, the 47-year-old New York psychoanalyst at the center of Harrison's sixth novel, has a family that's awash in betrayals. Will's father, a retired veterinarian turned photographer, is having an affair with the owner of his gallery. Will's brother, Mitchell, a long-distance swimmer with "a name as recognizable as that of, say, Lance Armstrong or Tiger Woods," is estranged from the family. And ever since Will's 12-year-old son died three years ago in a boating accident, his wife, Carole, has been emotionally and sexually distant. All these wounds pucker open when Will attends his college reunion and runs into a statuesque ex-girlfriend who left him 25 years ago when she may or may not have been pregnant with his child. That past betrayal becomes entangled with the others in Will's life and leads to further transgressions and revelations. Given the steamy, soap-operatic nature of this plot, it's remarkable how Harrison renders it emotionally plausible, in sinuous, sensitive and often funny prose, exposing the raunchiness of sex and the "obscene" nature of mortality. Will's profession as an analyst seems too convenient-allowing Harrison to analyze her own novel through the voice of her main character-but this is a pardonable flaw in a book so juicy and intelligent. Agent, Amanda Urban. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Everyone in Harrison's latest novel is having sex-marital sex, adulterous geriatric sex, sex that crosses that critical therapist/patient line. And then, because this is Harrison, there is the matter of incest. Will Moreland's solid marriage to his yoga-calmed wife, Carole, is coming apart at the seams. A successful psychoanalyst, fortysomething Will has squarely faced the daily devastation of two profound losses-the accidental drowning of his young son, Luke, and the complete estrangement of his identical twin brother, Mitchell, on the eve of his and Carole's wedding 15 years earlier. An unfortunate encounter with an old flame at Will's 25th college reunion sends him on a journey to reexamine his sexual history, which is soon revealed to be shockingly linked to his present disastrous fall from grace. Harrison writes like a poet, spinning a tangled tale rich with familiar themes from her previous works, most notably the provocative The Kiss, her memoir of her consensual affair with her preacher father when she was 20. Compulsively readable and deeply disturbing, this work is strongly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/05.]-Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Compared to most of Harrison's heroes, Dr. William Moreland is statistically normal. But that doesn't protect him from the floodtide of psychosexual anguish that washes over them all. Although he's a successful New York psychoanalyst with a perfect daughter--his son Luke died three years ago in a boating accident--Will Moreland lives in the shadow of the twin brother he hasn't seen in 15 years. Mitch Moreland looks just like Will except for a wine mark that covers half his face, but he's a champion long-distance swimmer, and when Will goes to his 25th college reunion, it's Mitch that everybody asks about. Will has a suddenly burning question of his own for Elizabeth, a college ex-lover who now heads the burn unit at Johns Hopkins: Was Jennifer, the daughter she was pregnant with when she broke up with Will and abruptly married someone else, actually Will's? Elizabeth reacts coldly, and Will, after a few months of his normal routine of fantasizing about every one of his female patients and actual coitus with Carole, the wife who ever since Luke's death will only let him approach her from behind, writes her an apology and a promise not to pursue the question. He doesn't know that it's already pursuing him in a form he can't imagine or control, and that it won't stop until all the certainties of his life and his faith in himself have been shattered. The material shouts TV Movie of the Week--well, maybe not a network movie--but Harrison's (The Seal Wife, 2002, etc.) measured, matter-of-fact prose gives each perverse twist of her pulpish plot a nasty kick, taking readers into the heart of Will's deep sadness and out the other side. An unsparing examination of the turbulent depths beneath an unsuspecting hero's most unexceptionable-seeming fantasies, and a life patently too normal to be true. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.