From Publishers Weekly
A story of obsession, selfishness, lust and despair, Harrison's accomplished first novel deals with a dysfunctional family and the enduring psychic damage inflicted on a child. The narrator, Isabel, tells of growing up in L.A., the product of a brief teenage union between a vain, paranoid, destructive girl from an eccentric, wealthy, Jewish family, and a warped, brutal youth with a "heritage of Catholic poverty." Emotionally abandoned by both parents (she is brought up by grandparents; her mother lives nearby but withholds intimacy; she doesn't see her father until her adolescence), Isabel accepts perverse ways of earning their favor. As a child, she is sexually abused by her mother; later, her father will repeatedly rape her. Equating pain with endearment, and sexual submissiveness and degradation with sanctification, Isabel pleads for a declaration of love from her mother as the latter dies of cancer, but is denied even that succor. Harrison relates this story in hypnotically intense prose, somewhat broadening the claustrophobic viewpoint of her protagonist by evoking what in outward respects is a typical California childhood in the 1960s. Impressively in control of her material, she will be heralded as a promising new writer. BOMC and QPB alternates.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Caught in the throes of an intense struggle to break out of her dysfunctional family and to gain the love of her mother, Isabel uses drugs to free herself of her emotional pain, enters into sexually submissive relationships, and engages in any action or situation that she can possibly think of to win her battles. At times the novel appears to border on melodramatic soap opera, crammed with every awful, sleazy situation that could make it a best seller. Then the reality of Isabel's desperate situation takes over. Despite the melodrama, Isabel's search for self is eloquently told in the pages of this psychological novel. Reading more like a journal, this first novel is rich in character development, motivation, and plot. Isabel's struggles and final triumphs over all the atrocious things she has endured make this truly a "woman's" novel. For popular fiction collections and libraries having a large female clientele. BOMC and Quality Paperback Book Club alternates; previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/90.
- April Judge, Thousand Oaks Lib., Cal.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
