LOVE AND OTHER ILLUSIONS

A writer enters therapy but struggles to confront her past in this novel.  

Forty-four-year-old Jillian Barrister is a divorced woman who has recently remarried. Her new husband, Clay, a trial lawyer, is passionate and appears to adore her, but there is an unspoken rift between them. As Jillian’s closest confidante, Hope, concedes, “It was impossible to mate a hawk to a dragonfly and have things turn out well.” Meanwhile, David, Jillian’s ex-husband, remains attached to her, despite having been unfaithful, which in turn affects his own relationships. Jillian is attempting to come to terms with the breakup along with pain in her more distant past. Writing is part of her therapy, and she decides that her second novel with be based on her experiences with Clay, David, and her psychoanalyst, Dr. Gordon Allison. Jillian has started seeing Allison four times a week and their sessions prove far from conventional. The spirited novelist is keen on learning more about her therapist and presses him with awkward questions while deflecting opportunities to open up about her own childhood. Finally, a breakthrough is made, which leads to startling revelations. Clay’s own insecurities are also beginning to surface, as he grows increasingly suspicious of David. A crisis leads Jillian to flee to India, where she seeks to gain a deeper sense of self-understanding and reflect on the actions of those closest to her.  

Robinson’s novel is ambitiously multifaceted in its aim to consider Jillian and her actions from a variety of perspectives. Clay’s brother remarks: “She’s untamed like a child, little brother. Restless like a child.” But the inclusion of Jillian’s correspondence with Hope paints the protagonist as strong and determined yet fragile. The result is that Jillian is shaped into a psychologically believable and complex principal character. Still, although the novel is intended to have a mildly erotic undertow, the author often crafts peculiarly unsexy turns of phrase, including this description of Clay and Jillian: “He’ll make love to her until everything is emptied out of her but sleep.” The dialogue is also frequently pretentious and contrived (Jillian: “Does the hunter complain of the hunt? The hunt is what you live for.” Clay: “You’re dissembling. Beating around the bush. Not telling me what I want to know”). Robinson includes quotes from Goethe and Nietzsche, among others, and Jillian speaks of her hopes of writing the “great American novel.” There is a sense that Robinson wishes to catapult this romance novel to the heights of highbrow literature. Yet despite some imaginative deviations, this book never reaches that level, often falling into romantic clichés, as when David declares to Jillian in a letter: “I think of you. I love you. I hold no one above you”—words dully reminiscent of Van Morrison’s ballad “Have I Told You Lately.” The portrayal of India as a space where Westerners go to heal is a stereotype, and is suggestive of an author struggling to tie up the complexities of a story at its denouement. Lovers of romantic fiction will enjoy this turbulent tale, but the book does not quite fulfill its intentions to deliver something more.

An intricate but uneven romance.