Contact Us 'Love story' lacking in love, any direction Riven Rock. By T.C. Boyle.
Confidence can get a writer in trouble.
To write pinched by anxiety is another, perhaps more reliable route to lifeless fiction, but confidence, aplomb, in a writer with books under the belt can sometimes spell dulling disregard for the reader. Stanley, crazy for socialism when he meets and marries Katherine, succumbs quickly to violent sexual mania and is shipped to a family estate outside Santa Barbara, where in the company of assorted male nurses, psychologists, cooks and gardeners he spends the rest of his tormented life. Boyle tracks this life. But there's not much to track. Stanley talks filth, lunges, catatonically stares, hurts his handlers, shows glimmers of reason, regresses.