9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a beautiful nightmare, July 18, 2001
By A Customer
This a brilliant, subtle, haunting book. It's a story about mother love, but not the usual story. Pastel cottons and sentimentality are in short supply; in their place we are offered a psychologically nuanced portrait of devotion and adoration changing slowly, inexorably into obsession, convulsion, destruction. Beautifully written (it's not surprising that Victoria Redel is a poet), it seduces the reader into a world whose elements of nightmare become evident only too late. The main character -- a mother whose love of her child is the central passion in her life -- speaks lyrically and convincingly from the pages. Entering her world, we find ourselves spinning in a psychological landscape ever more grotesque. Except that the spinning is so gentle, so gradual, and the unfolding malignancy so subtly drawn, that we can't quite locate the moment when beloved dream becomes nightmare. It's a harrowing story. It is also -- in it's evocation of the intimacy of mother and child, and in it's close observations of the dailiness of parenting -- enchanting. Parents (at least those who tell themselves the truth) -- will find resonances and echos of themselves. But it's not just a book for mothers, or for parents. It's a book for anyone compelled by the complexities of desire, love, intimacy and responsibility. And it is a book for people delighted by fine writing.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE IMPORTANCE OF BALANCE IN LIFE..., January 23, 2002
Modern music composer Philip Glass used a word from the language of the Hopi Indians as the title of one of his most well-known works: KOYAANISQATSI, which means 'life out of balance'. His music was written as the soundtrack to a film filled with an incredible array of images illustrating this concept -- images of a world, a life, out of balance with nature and with itself. In LOVERBOY, Victoria Redel's amazing novel, we can see that concept borne out in the life of a mother whose concepts of love and motherhood are so twisted by her own experiences as a child that what should be one of a child's greatest blessings, a mother's love, is turned into pure obsession -- a smothering, stifling blanket.
The woman -- whose name we never learn, we can only think of her as 'Paul's mother' -- has good intentions, and, I believe, does actually love her son very dearly. She herself was brought up as an only child by parents who were so in love with each other that their daughter could only feel excluded from their lives, even during 'family' activities. As she narrates her story, often returning to scenes and memories from her childhood, it's easy to feel the pain of loneliness and the 'cold' love of her parents, who very obviously had not the first clue about raising a child, about the lifelong effects their behavior would have on their offspring.
There is a particularly poignant description by the narrator of walking with her parents -- Sybil and Marty, she calls them. Her father strides along the sidewalk, confident and sure of himself -- her mother walks beside him, turned toward him as she walks forward in the same direction, as if she is trying to be closer still. Their daughter trails along behind, feeling ignored to such an extent that she feels she must put on a show, affecting an exaggerated, palsic limp and a twisted facial grimace, so that passers-by will find their attention drawn to her, instead of the loving couple -- her parents -- who walk in front, oblivious to her performance.
As Paul's -- 'Loverboy's' -- mother, she strives for as long as she can to keep him separate from other, 'lesser' children -- and he is, to be sure, an intelligent child, possessed of knowledge of many things of which his peers haven't a clue, thanks to his mother's attention to his 'education'. They frequent libraries and museums together, immersing themselves in books of all types -- no subject is off-limits, and his knowledge of things sometimes shocks and surprises others. He can recognize Bach's 'Brandenberg concerto', or a painting by Van Gogh or Degas -- things of which many adults are ignorant.
The tension in the narrative increases dramatically as the mother has to work harder and harder to keep him from 'mingling with lesser children'. The onset of his school years fill her with unspeakable dread -- she feels trapped and desperate. As we read this story, we feel that something must inevitably 'give' -- we can feel it coming.
Redel's language is shining and luminous. Even the 'rational insanity' (book jacket description) of Paul's mother is, in some ways, understandable -- we can feel empathy and compassion for her. We can feel the terror that exists within her at the thought of turning her child over to the care of others -- even for just the length of a school day.
It is Paul's mother's extreme over-reaction to the upbringing she experienced at the hands of her parents that causes her to swing too far in the opposite direction. There are no indications in the story that she -- or Paul -- has suffered any sexual abuse, or physical maltreatment. The way she has chosen to live her life -- especially the narrative describing the process she chose to become pregnant when she decided she wanted a child -- shows us all too clearly that psychological abuse and neglect can be excruciatingly damaging, while never leaving a welt or a bruise as a tell-tale warning sign for outsiders.
A very harrowing yet delicately composed and executed story -- moving and powerful, not one I will soon forget.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hauntingly beautiful, July 26, 2001
By A Customer
Loverboy is one of the most beautiful, haunting, harrowing, and compelling novels I've read in a long, long time. What's uncanny -- and also terrifying -- is the way Redel makes the mother's obsessive, destructive, and obviously crazy love for her child accessible and approachable. We reject the mother's insanity even as we recognize the echoes of her passion in ourselves. The writing itself is stunning: sparse, clean, and direct, yet able to convey a feeling for scene, emotional nuance, and psychological complexity through its focus on minute details. This is a tour de force that I've recommended to mothers and non-mothers alike.
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