Claire's Head [Import] [Paperback]

Catherine Bush (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 4, 2005

By the acclaimed author of The Rules of Engagement and Minus Time, Claire’s Head is a compulsive, psychologically charged new novel about a migraine sufferer and her search for her missing sister.

On a quiet June morning, Toronto cartographer Claire Barber receives a phone call telling her that her sister Rachel, a freelance medical journalist living in New York, seems to have vanished. Last heard from while on assignment in Montreal, Rachel cancelled a trip to visit her six-year-old daughter, who lives with Claire’s middle sister, in Toronto. Among the many fears that haunt Claire as she begins to track Rachel’s whereabouts is that Rachel’s worsening migraines have pushed her beyond her limits.

As Claire disrupts her orderly life to follow news of Rachel to Montreal, to Amsterdam, to Italy, and, ultimately, to Las Vegas and Mexico in the company of Rachel’s ex-lover, Brad, she enters a world of neurologists and New Age healers. Struggling with her own headaches, Claire embarks on what becomes an emotional journey, one that brings to the fore her parents’ sudden death eight years earlier. It also reveals the heightening tensions in her relationship with her partner, Stefan, portraying along the way long-held secrets from the past as well as the uniquely complex and irreplaceable bond between sisters. What Claire comes to discover will set her life on a new course.

Taking place over one summer, but delving back into the past, Claire’s Head provides both a layered, engrossing story and a meditation on how we live with pain and what we will give up to be free of it, written with all the insight, intelligence, and storytelling artistry for which Catherine Bush’s fiction has come to be known. With this, her third novel, she has once again proved herself to be one of Canadian fiction’s most striking and original voices.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Science tries to measure it, but perhaps only literature can truly map the boundaries of pain, and its jealous dominion over us. In this suspenseful modern love story, Catherine Bush has also given us a wonderful fictional counterpart to Oliver Sacks’s classic study, Migraine.”
–Marni Jackson

“Catherine Bush's fiction is clear, humane, gripping, and unfailingly intelligent. She is one of our finest writers.”
–Barbara Gowdy

“It is her combination of deeply imaginative storytelling and a genius for tapping into the zeitgeist that makes Bush’s novels so compelling.”
–Toronto Life

“Meticulous, often beautiful prose.”
–Claire Messud, The Globe and Mail

“Bush writes novels as brainy as they are poignant. For my money, there is no higher recommendation.”
–Newsday

“Bush is an evocative writer who can create a sensuous atmosphere with a few well-chosen words.”
–Washington Post

“Bush’s descriptions are so irresistibly seductive that you can feel them in your bones.”
–Vancouver Sun


From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Catherine Bush is the author of Minus Time and the national bestselling The Rules of Engagement, which was shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award, was named one of the best books of the year in the Globe and Mail and the Los Angeles Times, and was a New York Times Notable Book. Catherine Bush lives in Toronto.


From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart (October 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0771017537
• ISBN-13: 978-0771017537
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,292,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A headache inducing novel, November 2, 2004

By 

Alan Scheer (Toronto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Claire's Head (Hardcover)

For about 150 pages this is a wonderful read. A powerful depiction
of life for migraine sufferers, the novel operates as a mystery
with the principal character searching for her sister, compatriot
in suffering from crippling migraines. But then the author regurgitates the same information over and over again, we learn
every detail and mood associated with migraines, page after page
after page. The novel is too long and would have benifited by
a tighter editing. By the second half of the book I just couldn't
care anymore and I was seriously starting to develop a headache
myself. There is no distance in the telling of this story, you
feel like you are in the protagonist's head the whole time, and
after a while this is not a very pleasant place to be. And
after you start to figure out the rational for the search for
the missing sister, you stop caring. Bush is not a great prose
writing, but in the first half her story-telling is strong. There
is just too much of it in the end.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great descriptions of migraines, but not a compelling story, August 17, 2005

By 

The Daily Headache - See all my reviews

This review is from: Claire's Head (Paperback)

Claire's Head is a stunning depiction headache pain and treatment, desperation, and hope. The novel is an examination of the relationship that someone with migraines has with him or herself and with others. Even if your headaches aren't migraines, the struggle is probably familiar.

Yes, the descriptions of the headaches get old, The repetition might be annoying, but that's the point. Frequent disabling headaches are bothersome and do interrupt the plot - whether it is the plot of fictional characters or real people.

If you have a hard time telling your loved ones what your headaches are like, pass this book on to them. There's no way anyone can deny the reality of the pain after seeing it spelled out so well in this novel.

All that said, the story itself was not believable or particularly interesting! But reading struggles so similar to mine was engaging enough to make it worthwhile.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars a disappointing search, August 14, 2005

By 

Tara M. Enever (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Claire's Head (Paperback)

i am a migraine sufferer, so when my partner bought this book for me, i was intensely curious. i delved right in, but like the reviewer above, although i found the first half to be well written, it became an incredibly mundane, draining, and finally, disappointing read.

although bush's account of how painful and all-encompassing it is to suffer from migraines rang reasonably true, her prose quite literally became poisoned by it, through to the pointless ending that left me feeling empty and unsatisfied. i suppose the ending was intended to leave the reader with a sense of hope and peace, but i found it hokey and hollow. all that ridiculous searching for this?!!

i also agree -with the other reviewer- that bush would have benefited from better editing. if bush's intention was for the reader to indeed find themselves inside claire's head, then she succeeded. however, she may not have considered the place she created is so overwhelmingly claustrophobic, that the reader just wants to get out, but is left with no way of doing so, that is, unless they abort the reading entirely. i had hope, so i read to the end, and was left with an utterly disappointed 'that's it?'.

the best things claire's head has going for itself is it's first half, and the fact that in and of itself, it is a groundbreaking novel.