Book reviews of T.C. Boyle's Riven Rock
Riven Rock*** by T. Coraghessan Boyle Penguin, 1998 T.C. Boyle’s Riven Rock is a love story with quite a different character. Loosely based on historical figures, it is the story of Stanley McCormick, son of the inventor of the mechanical reaper and heir to a fortune. When, at age 29, he marries the charming Katherine Dexter, it should be the perfect match. But during the couple’s honeymoon it is discovered that Stanley is a schizophrenic with sexual problems which may lead to assaults on women. Trying to avoid a public scandal, the family brings Stanley to California, where he is locked up for the rest of his life at Riven Rock, “the lonely Paradise, the place where no woman walked or breathed.” In this, his seventh novel, Boyle turns a potentially depressing subject – a turn-of-the-century story of mental illness – into a moving parable of love, faith and devotion, sparkling with vibrant dialogue and rich prose. The author sprinkles his novel with a number of memorable eccentrics who easily win the reader’s sympathy. Riven Rock is not only Stanley’s tale, although Boyle meticulouly recounts the patient’s ups and downs, slow recoveries and sudden relapses, but is predominantly the story of the people who are bound to him. There is his wife Katherine, who firmly believes that one day Stanley will be freed from his demons. She devotes all her energy to two causes: her husband’s cure and women’s suffrage. In chronicling her efforts, the author unfolds a panorama of social history in the first third of the century. Eddie O’Kane, is the patient’s devoted nurse. Unlike the array of psychiatrists who come and go over the years – trying out everything from Freudian theories to studying the sexual behavior of apes – O’Kane faithfully remains at Stanley’s side, becoming a friend. Boyle portrays Eddie as Stanley’s counterpart. The supposedly “normal” Eddie is in fact a notorious womanizer and alcoholic, who beats his wife and abandons his son. Through the two characters, Boyle provokes the reader to question, “what does society accept as normal male behavior?” The book is at its most moving when the author allows us glimpses into Stanley’s thoughts and feelings, making his mental illness less alien, more comprehensible. Riven Rock explores the many facets of love. Even Stanley’s hostility toward women is a kind of love, manifesting itself in a twisted way: “He loved them too much, loved them with an incendiary passion that was like hate, that was indistinguishable from hate, and it was that loving and hating that fomented all his troubles and thrust him headlong into a world without women.” Riven Rock is a bizarre and tragic love story, told with so much warmth, candor and dark humor, that it is an irresistible read.