Riven Rock

Riven Rock-T.C. Boyle

How I heard about it: Two places really, my friend Megan suggested it for my book club, while my LA History Professor, Eric Avila, suggested one of this guy’s other books for his class. So it sort of joined together, as if destiny wanted me to read this book.

Setting: Santa Barbara, California, early 20th century.

Main Characters:

Katherine Dexter McCormack: A noted female scientist and first female graduate from MIT, Katherine is extremely intelligent and loves her damaged husband, Stanley greatly. She stands by his side throughout their long marriage, seeking both a cure for him, as well as involving herself in the growing issues of women’s rights.

Stanley McCormack: One of the heirs to Cyrus McCormack’s famous fortune, Stanley suffers from intense schizophrenia that manifests in a deep sexual violence and hatred of women. He is forced to be secluded from his wife and other female members of his family and society, and is locked for much of his life in his home of Riven Rock in California, (once the home of his schizophrenic sister).

Eddie O’Kane: Stanley’s head nurse, all he desires is to find fortune and sunshine in California’s fabled orange groves. Instead he finds a failed marriage and a fiery tempered Italian girl who make his life difficult, all the while he serves his employer Stanley faithfully.

Themes:

Mental Illness: It’s a horror to think how mental illness was treated in the past. In the beginning of the 20th century we were only begging to make the teeniest strides into the minimal understanding we even have now today, and by comparison it makes it hard for us to see Stanley’s plight. It’s heartbreaking to watch a man as charming and brilliant as Stanley fall into catatonic states where he is unable to move or eat. We don’t know what causes schizophrenia, or even if it can be cured, but the analogy of his home, Riven Rock, shows best the literal ‘split’ in Stanley’s mind. The estate is named for a large rock that is split by a tree growing on it, the act of life splitting it, much as sex and sexuality splits Stanley’s own mind.

The ‘independent’ woman: Women’s roles are changing in the early 20th century. Katherine McCormack is caught in a marriage with a man who she can’t be a proper wife to. Rather than leaving his side, she uses this as a platform by which she can properly involve herself in the efforts to give women more rights, including the right to vote. We already see in Katherine, a graduate of MIT herself, that she is not a typical woman of the mold that most in her social class were in, and rather than abandoning Stanley for a more ‘proper’ marriage, she stands by his side, convinced that she can perhaps make him better, and allowing the freedom she has to help her encourage other women to become scientists and scholars. She is even heavily involved in efforts to create birth control for women in the US, something that was considered scandalous at the time.

Katherine stands up for other women, no matter their class. She chastises the behavior of Eddie O’Kane, despite the fact he works so well for her husband. She doesn’t approve of his flippant behavior towards the women in his life, something he deeply resents her for. Yet Katherine has her limits of what ‘independent’ means. She is not irresponsible or ‘loose’, she doesn’t ever become like some women of her set who use the same birth control methods Katherine is trying to institute so that they can have lovers without fear of scandal. For Katherine, independence means she can have the right to chose how she lives her life, even if that ironically means she is bound forever to a husband who is insane.

The ‘California Dream’: This is best exemplified in Eddie O’Kane, but we find it in many of the characters, this dream that exemplified Southern California at the turn of the 20th century. Everything could and would be better out in California, with its sun, its oranges, its weather, its missions. Katherine sends Stanley there in hopes of curing him, much as many of those who were sick at that time came to California ‘for their health’. Eddie comes to start an orange farm and make it rich. California is the land of a million dreams, but few of those dreams are actually realized.

So every book has to suck somewhere: If I had to find a way this book sucked...well, I can't really. I must admit, this book was good. Now the historian in me wants to nit-pick and point out that these are real-life people, and this is a dramatization of real-life events at best, but...I don't care. It's a good story, it puts into perspective how a very real disease was handled in a time when psychology was only in its infancy. And it brings to light ones womans struggle to stand by her man and still be herself. I loved every minute of it.

Rate this wormy book: If I had to rate this book I'd rate it MONSTER worm. Go out and read it. I found it interesting and engaging, it was hard to put this one down.