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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Confabulatory Realism,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Healing (Hardcover)
Something told me I should read this book. What had initially caught my attention were the news stories about Jones and her husband. But the descriptions I was reading of The Healing also made me curious, and when I read the first page of the book, I immediately found better reasons for wanting to read it. I enjoyed the time I spent privileged to overhear the constant chatter passing through main character Harlan Jane Eagleton's head, repetitions and all. I laughed at the long, omnivorous reading lists put together by her client Joan. (I recognized some of my friends and myself in that.) This is a very funny book, a mythic--a confabulatory--tale written with a great deal of literary sophistication. And if you like this one, make sure you read Mosquito too.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
All things considered....,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Healing (Bluestreak) (Paperback)
...this wasn't such a bad read. Like the reviewer before me, I was anxious to love this book. I had read about Gayl Jones' dramatic recent past with her possessive late husband, and about her re-emergence into the literary world with this work. It did, however, fall short of my expectations. Jones is clearly in possession of a great gift, and many of this book's passages are profound, but only in a topical, static way. The writing is masterful, but the story itself is lacking in the kind of depth that I was hoping for. The tale of Harlan, the supposedly low-profile manager of Joan, the caricature of a feminist rock star (and formerly brilliant chemist) is completely unbelievable. I couldn't figure out why the two continued to stay together, in spite of the bad blood between them which resulted from Harlan's having slept with Joan's former husband (and possibly the most one-dimensional of all the characters in this book). In spite of all this, I finished the book and I still respect the writing, but I am now interested in reading her first books, which are the ones that determined her literary stature in the first place. I'm sure I won't be let down. It's a hit-and-miss world after all.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth the Wait,
By
This review is from: The Healing (Hardcover)
Gayl Jones speaks the truth like no other writer. Her characters go on long, entertaining and insightful rants. They burst into soliloquies and reveal the inherent racism in America with humor. Her text shows how American culture legitimizes and perpetuates cultural insensitivity at every point. The main character, Harlan Jane Eagleton, discovers she can "heal" people of all sorts of ills, but she can't tackle society's ills. Her own path toward self-healing takes her all around the world, where she meets up with various stereotype-breaking people. The only minor flaws in this book are an inconsistent narrative voice and confusing narrative structure, but Jones playfully addresses both criticisms in her text, thus subverting any complaints. A book of the ages for the ages.
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