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Book Review: Kathryn Harrison's Envy

by anna battista

The first novel with a contemporary setting since Exposure (1993) for Kathryn Harrison, Envy is also her second work with a male protagonist. The novel, set in Brooklyn, follows the vicissitudes of psychoanalyst Will Moreland who is having a midlife crisis: his ten-year-old son has recently died in a boating accident of which he claims responsibility; his guilt is killing his sexual relationship with his wife, but not his libido which he projects over his patients; memories of his estranged but successful world-champion swimmer twin brother Mitch come back to haunt his life and at his twenty-fifth college reunion he rediscovers old loves and comes to terms with new truths.

Envy becomes the main theme of the book: even though the writer never mentions it, it's there, it's latent, Will feels envy at Mitch and vice versa, after all Mitch has lived in a constant nightmare throughout his whole life because of a disfiguring birthmark that distinguishes him from his twin brother. Besides, Will feels envious towards his father, now retired, who is living a charming love story with a younger woman and has reinvented himself, becoming a successful photographer.

While Harrison explores the theme of envy, she also explores the male unconscious, analysing Will's mind, following him when he visits his friend and psychoanalyst Daniel and confesses him his problems or talks with him about his lies. The author seems to be interested in observing the physical and psychological elements that characterise Will, but also the theme of the doppelgänger: Mitch is indeed an evil version of Will, the two representing the good/evil dichotomy, but the reader never meets Mitch, though he haunts the story like a ghost, like a bad omen or a mysterious presence.

Envy is all this and even more, being also a novel about the eternal power game between the sexes and about women winning over men: Carole shuts Will out whenever they are having sex after the death of their son, using her passivity almost as a punishment; Will's ex-girlfriend Elizabeth also shuts Will out of her life dumping him, betraying him with other men, while her daughter Jennifer, who might or might not be Will's daughter, is a delightful, astonishing and shameless winner who simply gets away with everything.

Harrison is a prolific writer and the author of five other novels ( Thicker Than Water, Exposure, Poison, The Binding Chair and The Seal Wife), of two memoirs (The Kiss and The Mother Knot), a collection of essays (Seeking Rapture), a book of travel writing ( The Road to Santiago), and a biography (Saint Thérèse of Lisieux). With Envy she has created a novel with many plot twists and quite a few memorable and slightly disturbing characters, fragile men and strong women, all portrayed in an admirable and elegant prose and with the vivid dialogues that characterise Harrison's style. An overwhelming book.

{http://www.randomhouse.com}


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