The Truth About Love [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Josephine Hart (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0307272613 | ISBN-13: 978-0307272614 | Publication Date: August 11, 2009

It opens in a small Irish town in the 1960s with the accidental death of a teenage boy who commits one final, heartrending act of love.

Then: three brilliantly realized voices—the boy’s mother, his older sister, a German expat neighbor—speak the story into existence. Their descriptions of the aftermath of the boy’s death mix with meditations and conversations about other loves tested, twisted, or lost—in the past and forward, through the next forty years—as they struggle to make sense of tragedy: the boy’s, their own, their countries’.

In Sissy, the mother, we see how the desperate love of her husband and the delicate bravery of her daughter lure her away from her profound grief. In Thomas—“the German” to his neighbors—we see a man who knows all too well that “after a tragedy, many survivors are lost.” In Olivia, the boy’s sister, we see someone who remains intent on embracing the “weapon of memory.”

These voices speak with piercing emotion and intellect and, in Josephine Hart’s deft hands, they describe whole lives. Moment by moment we come to understand how these men and women are shaped in essential ways by the boy’s death, by their inherent characters, and by what they learn from one another about loss and love—and what it takes to bear them both.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hart's previous five novels (Damage; Sin) addressed the disturbing power of love, and in her latest, she returns to the topic with mixed success. Hart opens with the stream-of-consciousness narration of a teenage boy's fatal accident in 1962 Ireland before shifting to the precise, nearly stifling voice of Thomas Middlehoff (aka The German) at the funeral. Distant and polite, Thomas orbits ever closer to the beleaguered O'Hara family: the boy's father, Tom, wants to buy a family heirloom from Thomas; he bumps into Olivia, the boy's sister, with his car (she sustains scrapes and bruises); and the boy's mother, Sissy, exposes her deep grief to him, spurring him into contemplations of his own secrets and horrors. After another Joycean interlude depicting Sissy's treatment in a mental hospital, Olivia takes over the story from the present day, and though outwardly successful, she refuses to let go of her anger at her brother's death. Unfortunately, revelations in the second half of this brief novel feel rushed, while the characters' proclivities for introspection do little to create narrative urgency. (Aug.)
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Review

Praise from England and Ireland:

“The Truth About Love is an ambitious and poetic weaving of a long-ago family tragedy into the tragic history, and histories, of our time. Josephine Hart has come home in triumph.”
–John Banville

“In this compelling and remarkable book, Hart has written a moving lament for exile . . . The novel’s opening is a tour de force . . . There are echoes of Beckett and Joyce in Hart’s writing, especially in the brilliantly fractured syntax.”
–Times Literary Supplement

“Deeply moving . . . It packs a punch far beyond its size . . . An uncompromising tale that explores grief, redemption and memory.”
–Irish Independent

“A bleak tale, beautifully told, about the one burden we must all, as human beings, survive . . . Hart takes us to a place that, for most of us, has hitherto been both unimagined and unimaginable.”
–The Times

“Hart’s dialogue is extraordinary, blending poetry and naturalism like the great Irish playwrights . . . This book is sui generis.”
–The Independent

“A brave novel . . . Hart’s [characters] live beyond the confines of even her fiery and elegant prose and are impossible, once encountered, to forget.”
–The Guardian

“A genuine, deeply felt story of love and loss.”
–Daily Mail

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (August 11, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307272613
• ISBN-13: 978-0307272614
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.9 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,502,789 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars strong family drama, August 15, 2009

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Truth About Love (Hardcover)

In 1962 in Leinster, Ireland, the teenage son of Tom and Sissy O'Hara dies in an accident. Everyone comes to the funeral even newcomer Thomas "The German" Middlehoff who muses about attending his first Irish funeral. The parents of the victim and his siblings Olivia and Daragh know now life is surviving until you die.

Over time however, the desire to just live becomes superseded by other needs except for the family patriarch who believes his mission in life is to keep his family safe and avoid risk. The widower expatriate who ran away from one death that haunts him, Middlehoff initially adopted the O'Hara philosophy, but found it permeated his literary work. Sissy becomes so depressed she is hospitalized. Olivia is angry and resentful as she feels she lives a dead life in homage to her late older brother; she turns to therapy and the the stage to pretend she lives. Finally there is Daragh who is simply an evanescent shadow with no substance.

Rotating perspective the audience receives a powerful look at surviving the death of a loved one. The cast is deep as each represents an outlook on life and death. Although late surprise twists and denouements feels forced and hasty and detract from a profound look at THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE even in death, fans of strong family drama will want to read Josephine Hart's fine tale of what happens to those who live after a loved one dies with no warning.

Harriet Klausner