Riven Rock
Eddie Dayan (Photographs) and Pablo Campos (Author London: Bloomsbury, 1998. Second Printing [stated]. Hardcover. x, [2], 468 pages. Signed on the title page. dust jacket is in a plastic sleeve. A prized collectible, especially in the increasingly rare London edition. This copy has a bookmark ribbon. Riven Rock probes male-female relationships, the nature of psychiatric care (as it existed in the early twentieth century), and the mix of classes and ethnicities that is modern America. It also shows, above all, how much is to be gained by giving literary treatment to historical characters and events. In Riven Rock, T. C. Boyle transforms two real people from the pages of American history into rich mythic creations whose tortured love and epic story is intimate enough to break our hearts. Boyle anchors his unforgettable tale with the remarkable and courageous Katherine Dexter. Her husband, Stanley McCormick, thirty-one-year-old son of the millionaire inventor of the Reaper, has become schizophrenic and a sexual maniac. Stanley is locked up in his Santa Barbara mansion and forbidden the mere sight of women — above all, his wife. One of America's most imaginative contemporary novelists, Boyle weaves his hallmark virtuoso prose into a masterful epic. Textured with his acclaimed humor, versatility, and imagination, Riven Rock is his most fully realized and compassionate novel to date. Thomas Coraghessan Boyle (born December 2, 1948) is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published nineteen novels and more than 150 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988, for his novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York. T. C. Boyle's seventh novel transforms two characters straight out of history into rich mythic figures whose tortured love story is as heartbreaking as it is hilarious. It is the dawn of the twentieth century when the beautiful, budding feminist Katherine Dexter falls in love with Stanley McCormick, son of a millionaire inventor. The two wed, but before the marriage is consummated, Stanley experiences a nervous breakdown and is diagnosed as a schizophrenic sex maniac. Locked up for the rest of his life at Riven Rock, the family's California mansion, Stanley is treated by a series of confident doctors determined to cure him. But his true salvation lies with Katherine who, throughout her career as a scientist and suffragette, continues a patient vigil from beyond the walls of Riven Rock, never losing hope that one day Stanley will be healed. Blending social history with some of the most deliciously dark humor ever written, Boyle employs his hallmark virtuoso prose to tell the story of America's age of innocence--and of a love affair that is as extraordinary as it is unforgettable. Harry and Meghan have bought the Santa Barbara home that was the subject of this superb novel Riven Rock. The intriguing tale of a trailblazing, women's rights activist who married the youngest son and heir to a vast family fortune may be of great interest to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Not only does the relationship between Katharine and Stanley McCormick draw the odd parallel with their own, but the royal couple's new Santa Barbara home is built on what was once McCormick family land. The fabled 87-acre estate in Montecito, California, boasts a fascinating history - the place where Mr. McCormick was confined for 40 years due to mental illness, while a string of eminent psychiatrists were employed in a desperate, but ultimately fruitless, bid to cure him. The 19th century family saga is documented in this 1998 novel, Riven Rock, by the award winning American author T. C. Boyle. The villa also featured in an episode of The Sopranos. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Katherine Dexter, Stanley McCormick, Schizophrenic, Sexual Disorder, Psychiatry, Feminist, Nervous Breakdown, Mansion, Suffragette, Santa Barbara, Women's Rights, Montecito, Love Affair, Mental Illness
ISBN: 0747537933
[Book #86621]
Price: $175.00