Customer Reviews

Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings

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Godwin, best known for her fiction (Father Melancholy's Daughter and Evensong), gives us a change of pace with her book, Heart. She begins by looking at "a painting of a wooly mammoth on a cave wall in Spain [circa 10,000 BCE], showing a red, heart-shaped spot where the beast's heart would naturally be" and ends with Paul Klee's "most striking pictorial representations of the heart." In between, we meet the Buddha--"cool mind and a warm heart" as well as Japan's unique form of poetry, haiku--images that "arise naturally out of the...heart-mind." We come across teaching concerning the heart through Jesus, Mohammad, Confucius, as well as the Upanishads. We learn about the rift that "fractured seventeenth-century thought" as James Hillman reflects, "Thought lost its heart, heart its thought."

Interspersed throughout Heart are anecdotes that give us intimate access into the author's "heart journeys." Godwin's description of her brother's death is telling. "Though the official cause of death was gunshot wounds to the head, I believe my brother Tommy died of a broken heart."

Particularly instructive to me was the section entitled "Absence of Heart/Heartlessness." Gilbert Osmond, a character in Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, illustrates the behavior of somebody "without heart." Gilbert lacks empathy--he is not able to "feel what it's like to want to give someone else something without getting something for it yourself." He appreciates Isabel Archer's efforts to promote his welfare, but doesn't understnad it.

All this and more await the reader in Godwin's ambitious heart-felt work. Her proclivity toward wordiness works better in her fiction, nonetheless, this volume is well worth your investment of time.

the prologue of this book is my favorite part. the author lets us into her world: the death of a beloved pet, a walk in the morning, a vase of flowers. however, subsequent chapters turn colder with straight-arrow reporting of information/research about the "heart" as different cultures and societys see it. i quickly became bored with this "intellectual" style of writing. i wish godwin would've keep to showing us her heart instead of so much of her mind.

Disappointing. Though I'm a big Gail Godwin fan, and reread her later novels with delight at least once a year, this one will get put out at my next garage sale. Imagine a monster movie in which the Paralyzingly Tedious High Church Anglican Sermon meets the Deadly First Draft Graduate Thesis. I wish that Godwin had condensed her best heart insights and research into a sermon for a character like her Reverend Margaret Gower, from Evensong, to preach; or a lecture for a character like Magda Danvers, from The Good Husband, to deliver. The book's structure fails. Godwin hops unpredictably between historic characters or events to which she arbitrarily assigns a relationship with the theme of the heart. The treatments of complex historic traditions and world religions are distressingly superficial. Godwin has no command of comparative religion. The conclusions that she draws from one poorly-planned visit to a Buddhist meditation session are shallow. She gallops through Taoism, Shintoism and Confucianism, sweeping up a few easy generalizations about these complex traditions. In the best sections, Godwin writes about what she has obviously pondered longest: the Christian tradition and family relationships. She treats these subjects so well through the medium of fiction, and so clumsily in essays. I look forward to her next novel.

I found this journey into the meanings and aspects of the human heart uplifting, inspirational and thoroughly enlightening. Especially intriguing to me was the story of St. Augustine's search for God "from a period of violent floundering into joyful conversion." Godwin writes with a kind of intimacy that invites you to pick this book up to enjoy again and again.

Heart is a marvelous piece of writing! Every chapter has opened my mind a little more. I am very thankful to Mrs. Godwin for that interesting book. I have learned so many new facts about the different religions of the world. I recommend the reading of "Heart" to everybody curious enough to learn a little more about the persons around us thinking that the heart is important in life. Mrs. Godwin is my favorite author! Thank you for writing "Heart"! Doris VeilletteHamel, Canada

HEART is fascinating. Not a novel, but a meditation on all the meanings human beings have given the heart. Godwin uses an ancient myth of Ianna, who challenges herself by a descent into the underworld, to illustrate how we can expand our capacity for loving and understanding others. She writes vividly and fluently of famous theologians, authors, and epics, to make you think about illuminating your relationship to others. For example, the Buddha is he of the cool mind and warm heart. A life enhancing read.

So beautifully written, it swept me away when I badly needed to be swept away. The sections about the author's personal life are interspersed and I found myself quite choked up at the death of her brother under the section on the broken heart...something of which it is possible, even in our sophisticated world, to die. The first half remains the most intensely for me now (I want to reread the whole book), with its brief stories into the heart of many faiths. I wrote down many of the quotes and noted books for further reading. A very unusual book, truly occupying its own space among other volumes.