The Bleeding Heart
by Lionel Shriver
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For ten years, Estrin Lancaster has fled Philadelphia. From the Philippines to Berlin, she's been a traveler without a destination, an expatriate without a motherland. In each of the cities Estrin favors, she manages an apartment, a job, a lover, and never tarries past the first signs of ennui. Her latest destination is Belfast, in Northern Ireland. After twenty years of ritualized violence, this city, too, is exhausted--a town in which if one more bomb explodes in the city center, old show more ladies blow the dust off their treacle cakes and count their change. Here the lanky and spiteful Farrell O'Phelan, former purveyor of his own bomb-disposal service, technically Catholic but everyone's aggravation, wrangles through the maze of factions in the North by despising every side. Farrell's affair with the curious Estrin is nonetheless a meeting of two loners; like hers, Farrell's marathoning around the planet has become like running in place. In deadlocked Northern Ireland, it has become harder and harder to believe that anything is happening at all. show lessTags
Member Reviews
"Americans embarrassed her. They made no distinction between what came into their heads and what came out -- an endless stream of petty desires and ill-examined impressions dribbling from a hole in the face, the affliction amounted to mental incontinence" (6).
Estrin Lancaster is an American ex-pat living in Belfast, where she disassociates from other Americans and works in a local bar called The Green Door. It is on a distillery tour that she meets Farrell O'Phelan, who makes a hobby of dismantling bombs and who owns a local hotel. The late '80s of The Troubles in Ireland make for a rich, dynamic background for their relationship.
This book may be difficult to get through; the history and the conflicts described are not readily known to show more the average American reader. I know that I was unfamiliar with most of the places, events, and names that served as the background for the story. This is one of Shriver's earlier novels, and is a little heavy handed, although her characters are intense, and symbolic use of sexual imagery to describe Estrin and Farrell's relationship is spot-on.
"There is a trick to avoiding obligation that he had sorted out early. Maybe on Mother's Day flowers are in order, a card, a call. Those are the rules. But you can escape through a wee loophole: I am like this. All you need to do is establish early on that you are Not the Sort of Person Who Calls on Mother's Day, and lo, you are not. Expectation can be trained to zero. If you are Not the Sort of Person Who: goes home at Christmas, returns phone calls, responds to letters, or 'keeps in touch,' there is no discussion and, surprisingly, no anger. There may be rules, but it is not so difficult to make it clear that these are for other people" (218-219). -- Farrell O'Phelan show less
Estrin Lancaster is an American ex-pat living in Belfast, where she disassociates from other Americans and works in a local bar called The Green Door. It is on a distillery tour that she meets Farrell O'Phelan, who makes a hobby of dismantling bombs and who owns a local hotel. The late '80s of The Troubles in Ireland make for a rich, dynamic background for their relationship.
This book may be difficult to get through; the history and the conflicts described are not readily known to show more the average American reader. I know that I was unfamiliar with most of the places, events, and names that served as the background for the story. This is one of Shriver's earlier novels, and is a little heavy handed, although her characters are intense, and symbolic use of sexual imagery to describe Estrin and Farrell's relationship is spot-on.
"There is a trick to avoiding obligation that he had sorted out early. Maybe on Mother's Day flowers are in order, a card, a call. Those are the rules. But you can escape through a wee loophole: I am like this. All you need to do is establish early on that you are Not the Sort of Person Who Calls on Mother's Day, and lo, you are not. Expectation can be trained to zero. If you are Not the Sort of Person Who: goes home at Christmas, returns phone calls, responds to letters, or 'keeps in touch,' there is no discussion and, surprisingly, no anger. There may be rules, but it is not so difficult to make it clear that these are for other people" (218-219). -- Farrell O'Phelan show less
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28+ Works 15,466 Members
Lionel Shriver was born Margaret Ann Shriver on May 18, 1957 in Gastonia, North Carolina. She changed her first name because of her preference for it. She was educated at Barnard College, and Columbia University (BA, MFA). She has lived in Nairobi, Bangkok and Belfast, and currently lives in London. Shriver wrote seven novels and published six show more (one novel could not find a publisher) before writing We Need to Talk About Kevin, which she called her "make or break" novel. She won the 2005 Orange Prize for her eighth published novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin, a thriller and close study of maternal ambivalence, and the role it might have played in the title character's decision to murder nine people at his high school. The book created a lot of controversy, and achieved success through word of mouth. The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 was published in May 2016. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- The Bleeding Heart
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- The Bleeding Heart
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