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Title: Excessive Joy Injures the Heart by Elisabeth Harvor ISBN: 0-15-100894-9 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 27 March, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00

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Average Customer Rating: 4.67 (12 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Not everyone's cup of tea, but a work of genius nevertheless
Comment: Excessive Joy Injures the Heart is not everyone's cup of tea, but it is a work of genius nevertheless, it's so serene and original and powerful. It's even often very funny, and the humour is integrated into the work in the most natural way. I felt so full when I finished this novel, I felt it was perfect. Someone in a review I read somewhere (I think it was a poet) described Excessive Joy Injures the Heart as a book for connoisseurs of both language and psychology, and I agree. I have to warn some potential readers, though, that they might not like it. These might be the readers who are expecting something romantic. But then this is so often the case with brilliant novels, it's their fate to be misunderstood. There's no glib pap in this book, it's the real thing. And although it's a kind of love story (in the most iconoclastic and original way) there's nothing the least bit romantic about it.

Rating: 5
Summary: incredibly intelligent and funny and sad and deep
Comment: Excessive Joy Injures the Heart is amazingly funny and sad and deep. As an American reader, it was refreshing to read such an atypical Canadian novel, since Claire Vornoff, its protagonist, is totally unlike the women characters in other Canadian novels that I've read. She's so much more unapologetically neurotic and defnitely so much more human and witty. Highly intelligent and highly recommended.

Rating: 3
Summary: Excessive Tangents Injure the Reader
Comment: While I agree that the author has a way with description, the novel seemed to drag on in scenes that had really nothing to do with story. The novel is really a short story extended to 326 pages for the glory of showcasing the author's abilities with prose. Picture an independent movie. This is an independent book. You can appreciate the beauty of the art, but don't expect to be entertained. This book is best read a little at a time, perhaps over coffee during a quiet hour. I read it too fast I think. There is one reason I would recommend this book, however. The author truly has a grasp for how people feel. She addresses things you always think to yourself, but have never quite seen in print, or heard of from your peers. In fact, to me, the book was written entirely as though in Claire's head, as opposed to an external world, even though it's not in first person.