EXCESSIVE JOY INJURES THE HEART

A New Age first novel by Canadian Harbor, a poet and short-story writer (Let Me Be the One, 1997), about a young woman who becomes obsessed with her reflexologies.

Mad, driven passion can take on a universe of forms, but it usually leaves its victims feeling rather pleased with themselves in the end—possibly because they made it out alive, possibly because they fell apart so spectacularly in the first place. In this case, narrator Claire Vornoff begins in the traditional way, unhappily ensconced in the quietly depressing routines of daily life. Claire works as a physician’s assistant and takes courses in literature and psychology at the university. Originally from the rural plains of Saskatchewan, she lives by herself in Ottawa and hasn’t had sex in more than two years. In order to find relief from her persistent migraines, she visits Declan Farrell, a practitioner of alternative medicine. Declan, married and a father, is somewhat distant and peremptory, his sessions consisting of a combination of massage, acupuncture, and some more esoteric exercises (like biting on the caps of shampoo bottles). Claire doesn’t know what he’s trying to achieve with her, but he has a captivating manner—“When you were a little girl, something made you open your eyes much too wide. You tried to see everything all at once and you ended up seeing not very much. My guess is that you let people push you around”—so she continues to visit him weekly and even learns how to drive so as to see him at his center in the countryside. Much goes on in Claire’s life: her father dies, she has sex again (with a history professor from Carleton University), nearly gets pregnant—and she falls in love with Declan. Though this confuses her, she moves to Toronto eventually. And, at end, something very sad happens, and Claire learns a lot about herself and the world.

Foolishness: a Harlequin romance written by Andrew Weil.