The Nine Chambered Heart by Janice Pariat


I received a copy of this at the American Librarian Association's conference in January.  I specifically sought this book out after hearing about it at one of the Book Buzz sessions.  The story is divided into 9 parts.  Each part is narrated by someone who has loved and or been loved by an unnamed woman.  They recount impressions, experiences and how the woman affected their lives.  The book is a quick read and a very moving account of human relationships.

 How interesting would it be to be described by people from your past?  What would they say about you?  What would their memories be?  The book itself focuses on romantic love.  I think honestly it could have been more interesting if it was about not just romantic love, but about other types of love as well.  But I understand that romantic love is often the type of love that affects us most, both positively and negatively.  We can have the same people as family and friends throughout life, but romantic partners change.  And, at least from my own experiences, each person that you are romantically involved with changes you.  You learn and grow and lose and gain parts of yourself.

 The book is a quick read and is very moving.  I have to say that personally, however, I had trouble liking the unnamed woman.  Taken as a whole, the book is not only impressions of the woman by others, but also a glimpse into who she is as a person.  But from those glimpses I find her and her lovers to be annoying, shallow and unthoughtful at times.  I do think she is the same as everyone, just trying to do the best she can and making mistakes along the way.  But I don't know that she actually learns from these mistakes.  Maybe that isn't supposed to matter.  Maybe that is the point, that sometimes we don't learn from our mistakes.

 And each of her lovers seem to worship her, yet I am not real sure why.  This begs the questions, why did the author choose to use the woman's lovers to tell her story and why did each of her lovers have overwhelmingly positive things to say about her?  The author easily could have chosen to tell the story through lovers and yet make them dislike her at some point. Ye the lovers always described her with nostalgia and longing, as if they regretted not being with her anymore.  Though we as humans tend to see the past with rose-colored glasses, I do have to say this got a bit tedious.
Verdict: An interesting concept book from a talented writer, but I felt it fell a bit short.  There were moving instances in the story, but I never quite came to care for the characters.  Also, this book would be good for fans of romance and I expected more from the story than romantic love.

 Some things I ate while reading this book: Homemade stir-fry, applesauce 

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